


The Ducklings

by sam_kom_trashkru



Series: The Chronicles of the Nightbloods [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Character Death, I have a lot of feelings, the ducklings back at it again with being adorable, time to learn all about ya fav lil kids
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 04:32:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6359440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sam_kom_trashkru/pseuds/sam_kom_trashkru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were children. Broken, scared, small children. Not soldiers. Just kids, forced to be a part of something a whole lot bigger than them on account of the color of their blood. </p><p>or</p><p>A look into the history of each nightblood, from beginning to end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Aden

**Author's Note:**

> He is a soft-spoken boy with peace in his mind and his heart on his sleeve, too gentle to be a killer, to kind to be a warrior. He is a boy with the forest growing in his bones and hands that wish to heal, not harm (but also have a habit for hiding away honeycakes).

Aden is born in the middle of a freezing winter, one of the coldest and most unforgiving the forest has seen in quite some time. He comes almost an entire month early, and the healers had told his mother and father not to get their hopes up, because the chances of him surviving were low, and the chances of imperfections post-birth were high. Against all odds, however, Aden emerged a perfectly healthy baby boy, all limbs intact and no physical mutations to speak of, minus the fact that he was a bit smaller than expected. The healers had been baffled, not seeming to believe their own eyes, but his father, a strong man named Klaus who had fought in the first war against the Ice Nation, had laughed, deep and earthy, and proclaimed:

“That’s my boy! He’s a warrior, that one.”

If Klaus expected Aden to be hot-headed and quick to fighting, he would be sorely disappointed. He was a fighter, that much was sure, but his stubbornness took forms other than violence, for which his mother, Flora, was eternally thankful. 

He was a small boy for his age, despite the copious amounts of food pushed at him by both of his parents, who worked as bakers in their village, and the many sweets he consumed (honeycakes were his favorite), and this garnered teasing from the other children. They would try to pick fights, but Aden would refuse to strike first, a firm believer in peace and compromise even from a young age. Flora patches him up every time the other boys get a little  _ too  _ rough with him. She’d served as a healer in the commander’s army during the war with the Ice Nation, where she’d met Klaus. Aden’s blue eyes followed her movements sharply, always asking questions. He wanted to follow in her footsteps, be a healer, and Flora flushed with happiness, because perhaps she could save her son from the harsh brutality of their world, protect his gentle soul from all of the violence and bloodshed. 

How wrong she was. 

While the neighborhood bullies had been rough with Aden, they’d never been  _ too  _ violent, as nobody wanted to deserve the rage of the battle hardened baker. Flora was used to dealing with dark bruises, too dark for someone with skin so pale, and the occasional scrape, but Aden is careful enough to never let anyone see him bleed. 

He is five when it happens first. Toni had struck him with a thorn covered stick, and there was a long, thin line where skin had broken on Aden’s lower stomach, and the beads of blood were as black as the forest at night, and the small boy was terrified. He’d heard the stories of  _ sheidjus _ , of how all those who were vassals to this  _ blessing  _ had to go off to Polis, leave their families, and train to be killers. Aden doesn’t want to leave his mother, nor his father. He is young and scared, but oh-so clever, and he manages to hide his blood for another two years. 

There comes a day, though, where he can hide it no longer. 

Toni is older now, a  _ seken _ , and he has an actual knife now. Aden doesn’t know what he has done to offend the older boy, perhaps his very existence is merely the problem, but Toni pushes him up against a tree, and his knife presses into the soft skin on Aden’s arm. 

“ _ Beja _ ,” Aden pleads, “stop!” 

“No,” Toni snarls, “you don’t belong here.” And then the knife is slicing into Aden’s arm, and he cannot help the sharp cry that leaves his body, but before Toni can press deeper, he turns to look at the damage he is inflicting, and he backs away sharply, breath hitching in his throat. A lump forms in Aden’s throat, because he knows that he won’t be able to keep his blood a secret any longer. Toni’s eyes no longer burn with hatred, but shine with fear, and Aden hates that it is he who brings this fear to his bully’s eyes. 

Nightbloods are sacred, feared, respected. They are the harbingers of death. When Toni runs in the direction of the elder’s housing, Aden flees, tears shining in his blue eyes, to his parents. Klaus takes one look at his son, bleeding and broken, sobbing into his mother’s surprised embrace, and takes up a vigil at the door to their home next to the bakery. He refuses anyone entry while Flora sings softly in trigedasleng, the song about the ducklings in the stream, which had always lulled him to sleep as a young babe, and stitches him up, tears running down her cheeks. The frantic parents know now that their time with their son has an expiration date, and that it is soon approaching. He spends the night cuddled up in-between the two warmest people he knows, comforted by the safe cradle formed by his mother and father, inhaling the deep scent of bread and honey and smoke accented by the tell-tale sharpness of pine that screams  _ home _ . 

The village elders come to their home the next morning, and Klaus reluctantly lets them in. Their eyes are old, but their shoulders seem even more slumped today, appear even more tired. Nobody wants to send a child off to die, but this is what they have been tasked to do. Aden hides behind his mother as they talk, in grave voices that he dreads, informing them that the messenger has already been sent to Polis, and that the  _ fleimkeepa _ should be arriving within the next day or so to collect Aden, and the boy once more breaks down into tears, and he cannot see that the hearts of the elders are shattering, because everyone knows of the kind-hearted boy with hair the color of honey, who rescued baby birds who fell from trees, and begged warriors not to kill the wolf pups caught in traps. Aden was loved so much more than he knew. 

As the day goes on, Klaus and Flora do their best to comfort him. He spends most of his time cuddled up into his mother’s side, leeching all the warmth and love he possibly can from her, because Aden understands that he won’t be able to do this, soon. Klaus thought he would have much more time to teach Aden about life and how to survive, so he tries to fit in all of his important stories into these short couple of days, and Aden, small and scared and only seven years old, feels as though he can see his own funeral pyre being lit. 

Children who had once found the greatest joy in pushing him down and kicking dirt in his eyes come by his home and spill out rushed apologies. Aden doesn’t have the heart to turn them away, so he nods and watches as they leave with relief shining in their eyes. He knows that no parents want their children to be in the bad graces of a nightblood, of someone who may one day be  _ heda _ . They are scared of what he might do in the future, to retaliate, but Aden is far too  _ tired  _ to be angry, far to  _ scared  _ to be vengeful. 

Toni never comes to visit his home, and he doesn’t know if he is grateful or upset that the leader of his bullies has chosen to ignore him. Part of him wished that the boy might come, to explain to Aden  _ why  _ he had hated him so much, but the bigger part of him was just thankful that he wouldn’t be able to push him around anymore. 

Aden gets two days of peaceful rest with his parents, feeling safe in their arms and loved in his home, where he’d painted on the walls with his hands every year, beaming with pride when you could see a visible difference in size, because that meant he was  _ growing _ . This was his home, and he didn’t want to leave it. 

He hears the flamekeeper before he sees him. He can hear the horses, the uniform clopping of their feet, and dread fills his stomach, and before his mother or father can react, Aden is  _ running  _ for all he is worth, little feet carrying him down the road that leads out of his village and to the edge of the forest. He pauses for only a moment to figure out which tree is the tallest before flinging himself around it and shimmying it up with a speed that is only achievable by sheer panic, thanking his small body for allowing him on the uppermost branches, which wouldn’t support anyone heavier than he. 

It takes Klaus and Flora three hours to coax him down from the tree, and he can hear the guards who accompany the flamekeeper laughing, but the bald man looks unamused. His lips are pursed and his eyebrows are furrowed, and he taps his foot impatiently, as though every second wasted were a second he wasn’t going to get back. When Aden’s feet finally touch the ground, he is scooped up once more by his parents, who are crying just as hard as he is. They rush out hurried “I love you”s and “ _ stei yuj _ ”s before Titus is telling them that they have to leave now, and he is being pried away from loving arms. His mother presses a bag into his arms before one of the guards scoops up the crying, hysterical boy, and he doesn’t need to smell it to know that it is filled with honeycakes. 

The journey to Polis feels as though it lasts many years, but in reality, the ride only spans over about a day. The guard who had pulled Aden into his arms is named  _ Gostos _ , and he reminds Aden of his own father, so the boy allows himself to settle into the warrior’s arms, clutching his bag of honeycakes tightly to his chest, the only reminder he has now of his parents, who he would not see for who knows how long. 

Gustus was intrigued by the boy. He seemed much too quiet, much too meek, to be a nightblood. He had helped to train the previous bunch, after all, and his thoughts were brought back to another boy, one with sandy hair and bright green eyes, who had almost as many freckles as the small boy in his arms currently, who longed for peace. Ollie’s death still sat sourly on Gustus’s tongue, and he knew that Lexa would love him. No matter how often he, Titus, and Anya warned the girl, the commander, that love was weakness, she couldn’t help but love. It was in her nature. 

It didn’t help that his boy was too lovable for his own good, anyways. When he heard Gustus’s stomach rumble, his tiny hand reached into the bag of honeycakes and silently offered it to the warrior behind him. To share the parting gift from his mother, it warmed Gustus’s heart, and he found himself not minding when the little one fell asleep in his arms. Aden was far too trusting, far too warm, too loving, to be commander. He would have to harden if he wished to survive, but, for now, Gustus was content to let him sleep. 

When they finally arrived in Polis, the blonde haired blue eyed boy was still in a deep slumber, the morning light just peeking out from behind the trees. Titus opened his mouth as though to wake him, but Gustus held a hand up and gently slung the boy over his shoulder, one arm supporting his lithe frame while the other held the bag of baked treats. They made their way to the tower in the center of Polis with relative ease, the majority of the city’s inhabitants still lazing in their homes on this day of rest. The large warrior and stern flamekeeper rode the elevator up to Lexa’s level in relative silence, neither of them particularly fond of the other, but forced to coexist due to their roles in the commander’s life. 

Aden stirred when Titus went in to warn Lexa, looking around blearily around him, trying desperately not to cry as he felt the painful absence of the familiar scent of home, and the deep laugh of his father and the chime like voice of his mother. When Gustus led him into the room, Aden looked to the girl in front of him, his  _ heda,  _ instinctively. There was something in her green eyes that reminded him of the forests he called home, and he felt drawn to her immediately, and didn't feel so alone anymore. 

Aden stuck to Lexa like a duckling to its mother. At first, she was quiet and reserved with him, almost as though she was unsure how to behave herself around a child so young. After a few weeks or so, she warmed up to him, for which the young boy was immensely grateful. Other than Lexa, he knew virtually nobody in this large city, and felt so very small. 

Lexa took it upon herself to introduce the timid boy to her people, and they loved him as Lexa did, on instinct, charmed by his quiet mannerisms and genuine smiles, equally as surprised that a child so kind was given the blood of the commanders. He latched onto Lexa like a parasite desperate to find a host, and the older girl often found her hand being tugged by a much smaller one, and Costia would tease her about having to worry about competition. 

Aden loved exploring the city, first with Lexa, and then without her. His well-trained nose led him immediately to the bakeries, inhaling the familiar scent of baked bread and sugary confections, and homesickness once more enveloped him. He wished he could bottle this smell and return it with him to his room in the tower, which was much too large and much too empty, filled with eleven beds, only one of which was occupied. The women and men who worked at the bakery soon became accustomed to seeing the young blonde boy on a regular basis, and pretended not to notice when his deft fingers snatched honeycakes out of the overflowing stand. They adored him too much to say anything. 

Though Aden was thriving in Polis under the attentive tutelage of  _ Heda Leksa, _ he longed for companionship. He hadn't had many friends from his village, but he hoped to change that, but Titus scolded him for skiving off of his duties to socialize with the city children, so he remained mainly in solitude. His prayer for a friend was answered soon after by the arrival of a second nightblood, a whip of a girl who hailed from the Plain Riders named Ellis, whose hair was as red as the leaves of autumn, and whose eyes were the color of rich soil after a rainfall. She was older than he was, and initially regarded him with mild disdain, but wanted up to the boy after he shyly offered her a honeycake and asked her what it was like among the tall grass, where there were no trees. 

She told him of the buffalo, large lumbering beasts that travelled in herds. He had heard of them before, and some of their furs lined the beds in the nightblood quarters, but he had never heard them described with such reverence as Ellis used to describe them. She truly had a way with words, but her stories lacked the adventure that Flora and Klaus had been able to capture. Ellis’s tales were filled with facts, but interesting nevertheless. 

The two of them journey through the expanses of the library together. Ellis buries herself in thick tomes on war and history, eyes wide and determined, as though she planned to culminate all of the best battle strategies together and bring down the  _ maunon _ herself. Aden tried to become as excited over such things, but bored quickly of history, and travelled deeper into the library in search of something more interesting. His attention was grabbed by a series of seven books towards the back, with the same calligraphy on the sides, and he picked up the first skeptically, but quickly lost himself in it. 

As he babbled excitedly to Ellis about boys with lightning bolt scars, staircases that moves, snakes that spoke, and men with faces on the back of their heads, she regarded him like a madman, before shaking her head and sighing at him in a way that was familiar to all older sisters who were exasperated with their younger brothers. 

Aden took comfort in the stories, committing them to memory so that he had something find to look upon when he was struck with sadness, muttering Latin words under his breath as though they might actually do something. (It becomes a nervous habit of his.) 

When more children arrive, Aden welcomes them with open arms and stolen treats, a kind smile planted firmly on his face. When Nam bolts up in the middle of the night, sweating, Aden lights a few candles the way Lexa showed him, careful not to set the room slight, and whispers  _ lumos _ under his breath. The others always resent Aden at first, for reasons he still doesn't really understand, but they always warm up to him after a short while, and Ellis had told him once, affectionately, that he was too kind to dislike, to which he had blushed and mumbled under his breath that he just wanted everyone to feel like they had a home in Polis, because he had had to spend too much time on his own. 

Aden is a fast learner, but training does not break him in the way Titus desires. Throughout countless sessions of fighting, and many long, drawn out punishments when Titus expresses his displeasure with Aden’s behavior, the boy remains as kind and as gentle as he had when he first arrived. He still climbs up trees, now with the assistance of Nam, to rescue baby birds, and still steals honeycakes to give to his friends, his brothers and sisters, when they are upset. 

The first time he takes a life, it is on the battlefield close to Lexa’s side. He is nine years old, and the man he’d taken down was at least three times his size, but a carefully aimed dagger and the large body had crumbled to the ground. Aden immediately felt ill. This was not glorious, taking lives. It felt so  _ wrong _ , and when he went to retrieve his knife, his stomach churned. When his peers returned to Polis later, shaken, he huddles in the corner and breaks down sobbing, and Lexa scoops him into her arms and brings him to her bed, allowing him to find comfort with her just this once. He wakes in the middle of the night, screaming, and she hugs him close and soothes her hair, and he calls her  _ nomon _ , but he is sleep deprived and delirious, and won't remember it come morning, so Lexa says nothing about his slip. In the following days, Aden can be heard muttering  _ riddikkulus _ under his breath, trying to chase the negative energy away. 

After taking life, he is reinvigorated with the desire to  _ protect  _ life. More often than not, he takes the blame for the mistakes of the younger nightbloods, preferring Titus to break  _ his  _ skin with the switch, in order to spare the others the pain for as long as he could. After the sessions of punishment, Costia cleans his back and while Lexa mutters about  _ branwadas  _ being gluttons for punishment, but Aden just laughs off her concerns. He doesn't mind hurting so that the others have peace, and Lexa is overwhelmed at how selfless this child is. 

Of all the nightbloods, he has the closest bond with Lexa. While the battle hardened commander calls all of them her ducklings, it is Aden who first inspired the nickname in the first place, and none of the others could ever quite hold Lexa’s attention as well as he could. It is Aden who holds Lexa after Costia is taken from them, who offers her silent understanding, and sneaks her a few extra honeycakes for good measure. When she dies, he cries the hardest, because she had become his mother just as much as Flora had been, and her absence reminds him of when he first arrived in Polis, scared and alone and so very homesick. 

It is no surprise to the others when Aden refuses to fight them in the conclave. They all knew, deep down, that the commander’s favorite would be unable to even  _ try _ to hurt his brothers and sisters. They love him all the more for it. His last moments are much like all his other moments, he doesn't hesitate to sacrifice himself for small, quiet Sammy, who reminds Aden of himself. He is twelve years old, and should have had a long life ahead of him, but as Ontati’s blade ends his life, he can only think of how tired he is, and how it might be nice to close his eyes for once. The last word that leaves his lips is a whispered  _ protego,  _ a last attempt to protect those he loved. 

When he finds himself in the warm, familiar embrace of his  _ nomon _ , his  _ heda _ , Aden knows that everything is going to be alright. 


	2. Ellis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She was born with fire in her hair and the earth in her eyes and the wind in her heart. She is a scholar, not a fighter, her eyes itching to read, not scan for enemies. History sings to her more than any birds ever will, but she will never get the peace she desires.

Ellis was born amidst the high grass and the open plains, the warm winds of the plains echoing through her bones. Her hair was the same color as the woman who birthed her, red like the falling leaves of the trees to the North, eyes as dark brown as the buffalo that her people depended on as a way of life. The hair would be the only reminder she had of her mother, who passed due to complications of the birth, but Ellis didn’t find herself missing the woman much, her two fathers provided for her as much as a mother could have, and her older brother, Islar, told her stories of the woman she would never know. 

From what she understood, Ellis held the same old soul that her mother had. While her brother was content to ride alongside the buffalo, wind in his hair and the hunt in his heart, Ellis longed for knowledge. Craved it with every fiber of her being. Even from a young age, she was always asking questions. At first, they were questions that Jax and Abel could answer, questions that parents expected to be asked from their children, but soon they couldn't keep up with the young girl's quest for understanding. 

The Plains Riders were mainly nomadic, but her family had a permanent lodging near a trading city called Spiek, and there existed the place of Ellis’s every dream. A library. 

It wasn't particularly large, because most books were sent to the capital upon their discovery, to be treasured and studied by the  _ heda _ , who needed such things, but Ellis fell in love with them all the same, eager eyes tracing over the ink on the pages, appreciating them from a purely aesthetic standpoint due to her inability to actually read them. Her  _ gonasleng  _ was sketchy at best, and there were no books transcribed into her native tongue, at least, not that she knew of yet. Islar, who had no patience for books but loved his sister, spent countless hours reading to her, copies of history tomes considered unnecessary for the commander, and allowed to exist elsewhere. 

Her favorite stories were of conquerors like Alexander the Great, and she wondered for a moment if the  _ heda _ was meant to be as great as he, because they shared a similar name. Out of a tribute to both of them, Ellis named her first horse  _ Xander _ . 

When the Plains Riders began warring with the Desert Clan, Ellis shadowed Axel like a vulture to a kill. He was a general under their leader, and thus was involved in many important tactical decisions. Ellis thrived when she was allowed to sit in on meetings, eyes as brown as the buffalo soaking in every detail with rapt attention. She never voiced her opinions, content merely to learn, and she knew that the words of a child wouldn't be taken seriously anyways. 

As was often the case of war, innocents were harmed, and Ellis got caught in the crossfire. 

She remembered with great clarity the horror etched on the faces of her fathers, as well as her brother, when they saw her, being crushed under the weight of a fallen soldier, his own red blood mixing with her black, but she didn't know whether they were more scared of what had happened to her, or what they knew was coming. 

Her arrival in Polis was relatively drama free compared to some of the stories she would later hear. Titus had taken her during recovery, so she arrived groggy and confused, a pair of blue eyes blinking curiously at her from above, a tentative smile resting on a pale face. 

“Heda! She's awake!” Minorly concussed, the  _ gonasleng _ took a moment to register, and she winced at the loud intonation of the boy’s voice, who seemed overexcited and much too young for herself to associate with. Her eyes widened when another pair of eyes came to loom over her, as green as the forests surrounding Speik, etched with concern, a golden cog resting between them on the young woman’s forehead. This was  _ heda _ .

“ _ Heda!” _ she yelped, hurrying to bow her head, and wincing when the movement jostled her head. The green eyes softened, and Ellis felt a pair of hands gently lower her head back to the pillow it had been resting on, attached to a dark skinned girl with wild black hair and brown eyes that reminded Ellis of her own. 

“See, Lexa? I told you the girl would fall over herself trying to greet you, this is why you’re supposed to stay away until they’re fully healed to greet you properly.” Ellis frowned as she heard the dark skinned girl talk over her, as though she wasn’t in the room, and registered… was that  _ teasing?  _ This girl  _ dared  _ to tease the  _ heda? _

“You shouldn’t tease  _ heda _ ,” her words were slurred, and Ellis hated how fatigued she sounded, unaccustomed to not having full control of her own body. It hadn’t yet fully dawned on Ellis that she was in Polis, away from her two  _ nontus _ and her  _ bro,  _ and if she had possessed a filter, it was gone now, and she was utterly befuddled when the commander and the girl with soft hands began to  _ laugh _ . 

She must not have been the only one who thought this to be out of character, because the blonde boy she’d seen upon first waking looked just as bewildered as she felt, his mouth hanging open slightly as he observed the almighty commander  _ giggling _ .

“Oh, I  _ like  _ you,” the dark skinned girl grinned, “defending the commander’s honor when you still can’t stand. This one’s going to go far, Lexa.”

“You’re confusing her, Costia,” Lexa said gently, regaining her own composure, a soft smile still settled on her face, “but thank you for attempting to defend my honor,  _ yongon _ , Costia here doesn’t know how to behave properly around her  _ heda _ .” It was the other girl’s turn to look affronted, pursing her lips and settling a hand on her hip.

“Are you looking for subordination,  _ Leksa? _ Because that  _ certainly  _ wasn’t what you were saying last ―” Whatever it was Costia was going to say was cut off by a loud cough by a bald man entering the room, looking entirely unimpressed. 

“ _ Kostia _ ,” he grumbled, “I assume the girl will make a fast recovery?”

“ _ Sha, fleimkeepa, _ ” Costia responded, mood dampened, “she’s just woken up.”

“Then there is no more use for you,” he said coolly, and Costia took this as her cue to leave, and just as the bald man―Titus―began to scold Lexa for something, Ellis was lulled back to sleep. 

From her early days training with the commander, Ellis quickly figured out that the blonde boy, Aden, had already gained her favor, which was entirely unfair, in her opinion, because it wasn’t  _ her  _ fault that she hadn’t been the first to arrive. She’d made it her goal to resent the other boy, trying to ignore his hurt, confused glances, but she couldn’t afford to get attached. She knew how the Conclave worked, and it was best to not be friends with people she would one day have to kill. 

He didn’t give up, though, sitting besides her in silence as they practiced their lettering, Lexa adamant that all potential commanders had to be literate. Ellis loved these days, when they got to stay inside and read and write. She loved the physical training, too, of course, but these days were her favorite. 

“Do you want to go to the library?”

Brown eyes snapped up to meet hopeful blue ones, and Ellis cursed herself for looking so eager. This was not the way to avoid friendship, and she knew the best decision would be to decline the boy’s offer, but he just looked so  _ excited _ , and the thought of being able to explore the halls of the Polis Library had been her dream for  _ ages _ .

“You know where it is?”

He scoffed, as though she’d said some funny joke, rolling his eyes slightly.

“Of course I do, I was on my own for three months, and there are only so many places you can sneak away from Titus. He hates the library, follow me.” And so, Ellis came to find herself being tugged along by an over excited boy, who reminded her of the pups of the hunting dogs her people often raised to accompany them. They made a small detour on their trip to the bakeries, which smelt of sugar and warmth, and Ellis frowned when she saw Aden snatch a few honeycakes from the stands.

“They don’t mind,” he assured her with a toothy grin, “I think they like me.”

It was hard  _ not  _ to like him. He was younger than she was, but his heart was already so big, and kindness radiated from his very  _ being _ . Ellis knew then, as soon as he pulled her into the large gateway of an entrance to the library, that she could no longer avoid being his friend. 

There were so many books, and it was better than anything Ellis could have imagined. Tomes upon tomes of the history of battle strategy, and countless works dedicated to the masterminds of war. Her favorites were the ones about deities, like Athena, who were strong and independent and as sharp as a whip. Her mind became a sponge, soaking up information as quickly as she could gain access to it, rattling off different battle strategies to Lexa as the older girl taught them how to fight, breath heaving but a smile planted firmly on her face. The absolute euphoria she experienced when Lexa presented her with a copy of  _ the Art of War _ was indescribable. 

As the other nightbloods began to arrive, Ellis accepted them grudgingly, but she couldn’t help but love them all as she had come to love Aden. Of all of them, Pep was the one she could most relate to, as he was a storyteller, and she was a scholar. Together, they were able to weave tales of glory and sacrifice, of gods and mortals, of falling stars and crumbling mountains. At times, she was still jealous of Aden and his closeness to the commander, but she had found a friend in the commander’s lover, Costia. 

Their relationship had changed immensely from their first meeting, in which Ellis had thought the older girl to be insane. She still thought that on some days, when Costia was being particularly bold, but she saw similar behavior in Aden, Nam, and later Sammy, who were able to drive Titus absolutely  _ batty _ . She applauded them for their efforts, but never joined in. She hated the man, but didn’t want to suffer his wrath. Now, Costia was a friend, a confidant even. On the days that Ellis stayed inside, reading as much as she possibly could in one day, Costia often accompanied her, reading silently together. The silent reading had escalated into discussion, and the two of them often had heated debates over different books, and Costia always tried to get Ellis to read things she  _ really  _ wasn’t interested (like the books about wizards that Aden was so enamored with). 

When Costia’s head appeared in a box by the commander’s bedside, Ellis wept harder than she ever had in her life. The girl had been so  _ vibrant _ , so full of life, reduced to nothing by the Ice Nation. As much as Ellis craved for Lexa to march to the mountains and cut off the head of every Ice Nation soldier that stood in-between her and the queen, she knew that doing so would completely ruin all attempts at peace, and that was what their people so desperately needed. Peace. A united front against the mountain men. 

Lexa got her peace at the price of the life of the woman she loved the most, who had been a surrogate mother of sorts to the nightbloods, who all adored her. It was Costia who tended to them after Titus’s harsh punishments, picked them up when they fell down, and sent them smiles when they most needed them. Her absence was tangible, her ghost lurking in their room, her laugh echoing through the halls of the tower. 

Ellis missed her. 

But she understands the importance of sacrifice. 

When she is thirteen, she sees her brother again. 

Islar is twenty now, a fully fledged warrior, and is flourishing under the Coalition, travelling with the troops under Lexa’s command, eyes bright and hair always wild and windswept, no matter how hard anyone tried to tame it. Their meeting hadn’t been planned, but Ellis had accompanied Anya on a visit to TonDC to see how the new trading arrangements were going, and the red-haired man’s group had been stationed there for a little while. 

Anya sees him before Ellis does, shielding the girl behind her on instinct, because the seasoned warrior doesn’t trust anyone she doesn’t know, and Lexa would kill her if anything happened to her precious  _ strikwadas _ , regardless of their own friendly relationship with one another.

“What is your business here, boy?”

Ellis hears the hitch in his throat, but his words are deeper, rumbling, reminding her of her fathers, and she peeks around Anya as he responds.

“Is that, is that my  _ sis _ ?” Before Anya can respond, Ellis has already bolted around her, feet flying like Wiley’s, into her brother’s outstretched arms. Vaguely, she can feel the tears falling down her cheeks, but she’s just so  _ happy _ , and her brother is crying, too, and they are together again after so many years apart. 

She was going to talk to Lexa about having Islar stationed in Polis when invaders come falling from the sky. 

The other nightbloods are wary, and Anya tells them to stay as far away as possible, because, while the Sky People appear to be young and relatively clueless, they still have  _ guns _ , and all those who have heard of the  _ maunon  _ know how dangerous they are. The children, of course, refuse to listen to her. 

Wiley runs as quick as his feet can carry him in the direction of Polis, to inform Lexa, and the others stay and observe. Sammy, though the youngest, proves to be the most useful, slinking around in the shadows like a fox and reporting back dutifully with information on this new  _ Skaikru _ . Ellis sees them first when she is with Aden and Nam, and the latter is so caught off guard when one comes swinging closer to them on a vine that he sticks him through with a spear, much to his own horror, and the barely alive boy who had the misfortune of swinging their way. The nightbloods are ferried back off to Polis before they can hear of his fate. 

Ellis supposes she should have known that nothing good will come her way, because weeks later, the  _ Skaikru  _ eliminate three hundred of Lexa’s warriors in a ring of fire. Islar is among them (so is Anya). Her heart burns with righteous fury, but she understands when Lexa makes an alliance with them. They need  _ Skaikru  _ weapons if they are to infiltrate the mountain.

She understands when Lexa betrays them, too. 

She doesn’t necessarily agree with it, but she isn’t as angry as Aden, who argues that they would have been able to get all of their people out  _ together _ and strengthen the budding alliance in doing so. But Ellis understands, better than most of the other nightbloods, she understands sacrifice. And if Lexa was prepared to sacrifice the girl she loved to her people, who was Ellis to judge her? She was  _ heda _ after all, her word was law.

None of her expertise in patterns and battle strategies prepares her for Clarke coming  _ back _ . Not of her own will, of course, Lexa forcibly  _ drags  _ her to Polis on account of “keeping her safe”, but Clarke stays of her own free will. Sure, she says that it’s for her people, but Ellis doesn’t buy into that for a second. Not with how obviously concerned Clarke is for Lexa’s survival, not with the way she looks at her. 

Ellis doesn’t form a close bond with Clarke like she did with Costia. There wasn’t enough time, and she didn’t really  _ want  _ to feel like she was replacing the roll Costia had taken in her life. But Clarke sees her one afternoon, reading  _ Macbeth _ , and makes a joke about Lady Macbeth, and Ellis can’t help but grin, and decides that, in time, she could come to like this Sky Person. 

Time, however, isn’t in Ellis’s favor. 

Nothing ever is.

She never thought she’d see someone more heartbroken than Lexa had been when Costia had died, but she was wrong. Oh, how wrong she was. Clarke had been with Lexa until her dying breath, trying desperately to save her, but the commander had accepted her face. Ellis felt a small comfort knowing that Lexa had died in the arms of the woman she loved, but it didn’t make it hurt any less. She hears Aden ask the question they were all wondering.

“You loved her, didn’t you?”

And Clarke can only nod, tears filling her eyes, as blue as the sky, and chokes back sobs when Aden hugs her, whispering a sad  _ me, too _ . 

She’d always known, since her first day of arrival in Polis, that the Conclave would come eventually. She hadn’t expected it to be so soon, had always thought of it as something she wouldn’t have to worry about much later, because Lexa seemed invincible. As she stood in the forest arena, her heart fills with dread, and she wishes that she would have taken her own advice, so long ago, to not get attached to the other nightbloods, because she doesn’t want to hurt any of them.

She doesn’t regret befriending them, though, how could she? They were her brothers and sisters, the people who had been with her throughout the most difficult trials of her life. Her heart aches when she sees Aden run in front of Ontari, distracting her to allow Sammy more time to hide, fearless even in his last moments. 

He has always been an idiot, but he had been  _ her  _ idiot, her little  _ bro _ , and she knew her fate was settled the moment she saw Ontari make the killing blow. 

She knew that she stood no chance against this girl, but Nam had come up besides her, eyes narrowed. The two of them, along with Aden, had been the first three, and they were the closest, had always had a bond stronger with one another than with the others, and they wouldn’t stand for their brother dying without a fight.

Aden was waiting for them, grinning, tears shining in his eyes as he stuck to Lexa’s side, when they arrived together, and Ellis knows that regardless of how short her life had been, every moment had been worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ellis, my sweet little scholar, you deserved so much better.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed the chapter! Next up is Nam. Comments/kudos are always appreciated, and come hang out on my tumblr, [hedaclexa](http://www.hedaclexa.tumblr.com), to yell at me for breaking your heart, obsess about the ducklings or Eliza or Alycia, etc.
> 
> (Also, @ whoever dragged JRot at the wondercon panel: god bless)


	3. Nam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He was born in the haze of battle, the cries of soldiers his lullaby, the adrenaline of the fight rushing through his veins. He was born for this, the fighting, the competition, the scramble for power, but he was raised to care.

Nam was born in the middle of a battle.

While others considered this to mean metaphorically, it was quite literal. His mother refused to be stopped by something as small as a  _ pregnancy _ , and had remained on her horse, commanding her troops as her people warred with the people from the Shadow Valley, a dispute over the borders. The healer designated for battles was all too surprised when Larynx approached her, stating calmly that she was about to have her child. Nam was welcomed into the world with the symphony of battle cries cascading around his sensitive ears, the thrum of battle already singing to his heart. Larynx knew from the first moment she laid eyes on the squirming baby boy that he would grow to be a fine warrior, his little fist gripping to her finger with a strength that seemed out of proportion to his small body. 

He grew alongside his mother, often swaddled to her side as she rode around battlefields, yelling out orders and leading her people to victory. The  _ Gloukru  _ and  _ Sheidkru _ often had skirmishes, as well as the  _ Roukru _ , so there were never any lack of battles for Nam to observe. He had the same boundless energy that his mother possessed, transitioning from walking to running as quickly as possible, not caring about the scrapes on his knees and palms from falling.

Of all the nightbloods, it was he who discovered his heritage first, at three years old, when Larynx finally deemed him old enough to start training with actual blades. They were much smaller than the ones hefted by his mother’s warriors, but he was enthusiastic all the same, and took to fighting like a fish to water. He sparred with the older children, who thought he was the most fantastic plaything, laughing and joking with him as they danced around one another with miniature weapons, blunted, but still dangerous when used correctly. He wore his first wound with pride, and his mother’s eyes gleamed calculatingly when she saw the black blood trickling out of them. 

It was considered treason to hide a nightblood from the commander, but she figured that the  _ heda _ could do a while longer without finding new nightbloods, and would wait until the current commander, Amaya, passed. Nam would only leave her sight when he was older, and there was a new commander in need of new nightbloods, he wouldn’t stand a chance against the already existing ones. 

So Nam thrived alongside his mother and his people, spending countless hours with the blacksmiths, eyes watching with delight as they molded metals to their will, turning them into weapons of mass destruction, wishing nothing more than to have one of his own, and to be able to wield it properly. 

He didn’t spend all of his time fighting, though, far from it. While he felt most alive in the training wring, wrestling with other children or sparring with them, his energy was also used in other ways. He scaled the tallest of trees to look down upon the enemy for his mother, because the top branches could only support the weight of someone his size. From the treetops, he got the best views of battles, and cheered pridefully whenever he saw his mother, unshakable and proud, a fierce warrior who commanded respect. He and the other children held countless competitions, wrestling, tree climbing, foot races, etc., and Nam performed best when he was competing. There was a drive in him, a hunger to be the very best at every challenge presented to him, bring honor to his family. 

The Glowing Forest was  _ home _ , and Nam couldn’t imagine life anywhere else. The soft lights, greens and blues and purples, that left the trees and the bushes and the water comforted him when he slept, and he spent many nights chasing lightning bugs and luminescent butterflies to his heart’s content, his mother keeping watch with a keen eye, small smile fixed onto her usually stoic face. On the battlefield, she was harsh and demanding, but with her son she could relax and enjoy the beauties of life, the glowing light that told her she was home. 

It broke her heart when Nam had to leave. 

He was nine years old, dark eyes wide with fear of the unknown, and he looked to his mother hopelessly. This was a challenge he hadn’t anticipated, leaving behind the woman he loved most in the world, his  _ nomon _ . And Larynx’s heart ached as she saw him tugged along by a stern looking woman named  _ Onya _ and the bald man whose face set a sour taste in the back of her throat. A mother’s intuition told her the man was bad news, but she let her son be led away anyways, knowing that he had a bright future ahead of him as long as the commander lived.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was sending her son off to die, the same feeling she got right before a battle, when she looked her soldiers in the eyes and told them to fight. This time, it made her ill.

Used to being the best, the first, the favorite, Nam was rather unsettled when he arrived in Polis to find two children already there, a boy his age and a girl a year older. He’d hoped to gain favor with the commander, but knew from the beginning that it was the blonde boy who already held it, and he wasn’t used to coming in second. The first couple of weeks after his arrival, he was set on resenting the other boy, but the girl, Ellis, shook her head and told him it was a lost cause. He didn’t understand what she meant by that until Aden appeared with Lexa when Nam woke in the middle of the night, shaking because it was too  _ dark _ , and lit candles, wordlessly passing the darker haired boy a few honeycakes and whispering an odd word under his breath. 

From that day on, the three of them were inseparable. 

Aden took Nam to explore the city, the two boys navigating the countless stands of food and other goods, showed him the bakery where his deft fingers plucked honeycakes for them to munch on. Alongside Aden, Nam learned the best places to hide to avoid the wrath of Titus, as well as the best places to set up pranks to catch the old, stern man unaware. On the days that their backs were too sore to consider another prank, they sat in the library with Ellis, climbing over shelves of books to find the most interesting ones, and often pretending as though they were the main characters.

Ellis pretended to be annoyed with them, but secretly enjoyed the performances the two of them put on for her, and found herself adopting them as her own brothers. 

Nam had never had siblings before, his family confined to just himself and his mother, but he found it rapidly expanding in the flourishing city life of Polis. Ellis and Aden would always be the two he had the closest relationship with, but he came to care for the others as they came, too, the children finding their niche in such an unfortunate situation. He might not have been Lexa’s favorite, but he could still see the pride in her eyes, and that was more than enough. 

His feet were confident and sure in the battlefield, dancing around and under Lexa’s hits with the fluidity of someone much older than him, eyes alight as he heard the clash of metal on metal every time he successfully parried one of Lexa’s hits. Fighting with the other children was like an elaborate game, each of them knowing the other’s strengths and weaknesses and doing their best to exploit the latter. They complimented each other perfectly, and Nam often wondered why only one of them got to be the commander, when they worked much better in tandem, picking up on the slack of others in their areas of expertise. 

He was a fierce warrior, and an even fiercer protector. He wasn’t as open about it as Aden, who took punishments for the younger children with gritted teeth and shining eyes, but he still protected the others, in different ways, whether it be a distraction for them to have time to get away from the crime scene, or just going easy on them during sparring. He felt it was his duty as the strongest of them, and there was no argument that he  _ was  _ the strongest, he was  _ born  _ for this. He watches them keenly when Lexa begins their training, always willing to offer pointers and stay with them for extra practice.

When he allows himself to be soft, he is one of the most caring of the nightbloods. 

He often finds Aden tugging on his arm, pointing in the direction of the trees.

“Another one?”

“The little  _ branwadas  _ don’t seem to realize that their wings aren’t meant for flying yet.” The two brothers rescue baby birds fallen from their treetop nests, nursing the wounded ones back to health before carefully shimmying up trees to place them back with their own brothers and sisters. It is Costia who teaches them how to patch up the baby birds, and she does so fondly, affection evident in her eyes, when they bring them to her, frantic and demanding, because who wants to see something so innocent die? Titus scolds them for distracting the healer from her actual work, but Costia waves him off, saying that any interest in healing was important for her to see to. 

Ellis teaches him to play chess. The older girl had been taught to play by Lexa herself, and Nam knew he was setting himself up for failure when he agreed to play with the girl. Aden complained on a regular basis that there was no way someone should be so good at something the way Ellis was at chess, and Ellis just scoffed and said that he was the worst chess player throughout all twelve clans, and it wasn’t  _ her  _ fault that he lacked the forethought for the game. Nam fared slightly better but he, too, was bested by Ellis’s laser sharp wit and winning strategies. She was always ten steps ahead of him, and Nam knew now how to accept defeat when it was well earned. 

Other than Ellis and Aden, Nam gets along rather spectacularly with Lyz, despite his people’s quarrels with those who resided on the Rock Line, because she has just as much energy as he does, and swears like a seasoned soldier, which makes some of the other children laugh or roll their eyes. Out of all the others, she is the only other one who knows the language of silent hand gestures common during battle, and he knows this is because she was raised by warriors like he was, and she, too, thrived in battle. He often wondered how she got along with quiet Lysh, who was calm and composed and always looked so scandalized when the Lyx swears, eyes widening and lips pursed in disapproval. Here, in Polis, the battles of their homelands are forgotten almost entirely, only popping up every now and then when there are competitions, and Nam lets himself relax.

He is mad at himself when he is unsettled at the last arrival to the nightbloods, Sammy.

While the  _ Gloukru  _ and the  _ Roukru  _ often had skirmishes, they were nothing like the almost constant fighting with the  _ Sheidkru _ . Larynx herself had almost been fatally wounded by the leader of the Shadow Valley, Kieron, too many times for comfort, so Nam found himself immediately on edge when the small, quiet boy arrived, eyes calculating and cold, appearing small and innocent, but Nam knew that appearances could be deceiving. 

He warms up to the boy fairly quickly at the insistence of his fellow nightbloods that Sammy is actually quite sweet, preferring to speak in small gestures and facial expressions rather than words. He flinches when in direct sunlight for too long, and Nam knows that this boy must have been raised underground, so he makes it his duty to always stand in front of him, proving a shadow for the smaller boy to find comfort in. The first time he does it, he can see the gratitude in Sammy’s eyes and is rewarded with a small, barely audible, but still there:

“ _ Mochof.” _

By the time the nightbloods leave for an excursion to TonDC with Anya, all eleven of them are closer than most families, and the journey there is filled with laughter and happiness. Mari spooks Daya’s horse on purpose, the other girl laughing as she held on tightly to the bucking horse as the first girl calms the gentle giant just as easy as she had scared it. Pep whistles an upbeat tune that Wiley’s feet twist to, and Aden passes around honeycakes from a bag he’d managed to smuggle out of the city. Anya observes them with fondness in her eyes, but a stoic expression, and gently reminds them to not eat too many sweets, because she won’t be the one caring for a child with a stomachache. 

Anya reminds Nam of his mother the most. 

Sure, Lexa was the unofficial  _ nomon _ of all the nightbloods, but it was Anya who was the most similar to Larynx. She was a proud, no-nonsense sort of woman, with stern eyes and a harsh voice, but there is a hidden softness to her, the kind that only comes out at night surrounded by glowing butterflies and the light of the stars. She often teased Lexa for being a mother bear, but Nam knows that she, too, would attack with the fury of a thousand bears if someone harmed even one  _ hair  _ on the head of any of them, she just  _ pretends  _ to dislike them. 

When mountain men fall out of the sky in a box, Nam is very surprised.

They all are, eyes wide and jaws unhinged, except for Sammy, who never appears surprised about anything, but even the quiet boy lurking in the shadows cannot stop the soft gasp that escapes his mouth. Anya tells them to stay away.

So, naturally, they move to inspect these new  _ Skaikru _ . 

Sammy gets the closest, confident enough in his ability to remain unseen to get to the very edge of their camp, and he reports back dutifully that they are all absolute  _ branwadas  _ with no idea how to survive, cheering and running around like madmen, disrupting all of the wildlife and just generally acting like drunken fools. Nam, Aden, and Ellis venture out further than Anya would like them to, keenly watching to see if any of them try to get to Mount Weather, which had been the bane of their people for much too long. At first, there is no sign of any attempts, so the three of them laze around in the undergrowth, talking and laughing, so Nam is caught completely off guard when one comes swinging right past them, and his spear is leaving his hand before he can even register his own movements. 

Anya smacks him on the back of the head softly before ushering him and the other children back to Polis, saying that she would return to them shortly. Tris, Anya’s second, waves them off as they leave, and Nam can’t help but feel disappointed that they hadn’t been able to see if the strange boy would make a recovery, and slightly guilty that it had been he who caused that injury. 

He doesn’t feel so bad when a messenger comes to inform Lexa that the Sky People have burned three-hundred of their warriors alive. He holds Ellis tightly to his chest when she cries because her  _ bro  _ had been among the soldiers, and he wishes then that the spear had been thrown with a little more force, because these  _ Skaikru  _ were poison to the forest, vessels of death and destruction. 

Needless to say, he is offput when Lexa forms an alliance with them, but even he cannot bring himself to feel satisfaction when his people betray theirs, because there is no honor in such an act. Lexa always tells them that victory stands on the back of sacrifice, but he can’t help but wonder how many people have to be sacrificed before they begin to realize that they don’t  _ want  _ to be sacrificed anymore. 

He can see the weight of the mountain resting on  _ wanheda _ ’s shoulders when she arrives, can see it in the dullness of her once vibrant blue eyes, in the drag in her step and the stutter in her breath. This is a girl who would do anything to save her people, but doesn’t know how to deal with the overwhelming guilt of blood on her hands. She reminds Nam of himself after his first kill in battle, alongside Lexa and Aden and Ellis and Pep, and it makes his heart ache in sympathy, and he decides that the best way to help her is to show her how to better defend herself. 

He trails behind her as she explores the city, eyes constantly on watch for those who might try to kill her to take her power, and it isn’t long before she asks what he is doing, and he is honest with her. Nam can’t tell if she is more touched or affronted, but when he asks her to hit a target with a knife, she concedes that she needs help, and he is more than willing to offer it to her. By the time he has shown her everything, he is confident in her ability to protect herself, and sees the way Lexa smiles at him gratefully, because Lexa would be crushed if anything were to happen to his girl with the sky in her eyes and stardust in her bones.

Not even Nam’s lessons could protect Clarke from the pain of Lexa’s passing, and nothing could prepare Nam for it either. He had always seen Lexa as an immovable object, strong and firm and brave and just, and for her life to just dissipate like  _ that _ … it made him a lot less confident about his own abilities. 

None of them had time to properly grieve, because before they knew it, the Conclave was beginning, and for the first time in his entire life, Nam felt  _ scared _ . There had been fear in the dark, and apprehension before fights, but he could feel his body shaking, feel the churning in his stomach, the tightness of his throat. This was not glorious, being forced to kill those he had come to love, just for a chance to take over for the woman who had raised him as her own child. He sees Ellis as he hears Aden’s cry, and his heart stutters in his chest, because nothing seemed more painful than Aden dying.

Aden, who had welcomed all of the nightbloods with open arms and sugary treats even when they had resented him, the glue that held their misfit family together, was  _ dead _ . Nam’s dark eyes found Ellis’s pained ones, and for a brief moment, their was comfort in knowing that he wasn’t alone, that he would leave this world alongside the girl who was his match in every way, his toughest competitor and greatest friend. They move together with the fluidity of years of practice, but their fury makes them sloppy, and Nam is content to know that he won’t have gone down without a fight. 

When his eyes soak in the sight of Aden, curled into Lexa’s side, he lets out a shaky laugh and takes in a breath of fresh air, and for once in his life, Nam is at peace. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A warrior till the end. It was inevitable, really, seeing as he was named after a war monument, but that doesn't make me feel any better. Poor lil guy just wanted peace the whole time.
> 
> Comments/kudos are always appreciated! Come hang out on tumblr, [hedaclexa](http://www.hedaclexa.tumblr.com), where you can yell at me, obsess about the ducklings, discuss our mutual hate for JRot, etc. Thanks for reading! Up next, Mari!


	4. Mari

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She was born where the waves never stopped moving, and neither did she. She was an explorer at heart, a free spirit who cared for horses more than people, but the people in Polis were worth caring for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a shorter chapter but I'm still happy with it. Next up is Pep, hope you enjoy.

Mari was born in the stormy seas, the rocking of the waves lulling her to sleep. She was born to two of the Boat Clan’s finest fishermen, who took many perilous journeys on large ships to the far depths of the ocean, where there were countless beasts waiting to devour them. Trips like these were dangerous, so every time they returned from one there was reason to celebrate, towing along supplies of fish to feast on and trade with the other clans, because the deep ocean fish were much more sought after than those that resided in the rivers, though the  _ Floukru  _ caught those, too. 

Though her parents were most at home at sea, they both realized that it wasn’t the most stable environment for a small child, so they often left Mari in the care of her aunt, Luna, who was a young woman next in line to be their leader. Luna and her lover, Ariel, cared for Mari as though she was their own, and the young girl often recognized the two of them as her parents rather than the actual people who had created her, because Sol and Elle were absent from her life more than they were present. 

Like all children of the Boat Clan, Mari learned to swim before she learned to walk, taking to the river like a trout and paddling along happily with her  _ nonsi _ , who watched her with proud eyes. Everywhere Luna went, Mari was quick to follow, and she picked up on  _ gonasleng  _ quickly, as it was used during trade negotiations. While other clans were busy fighting with one another, the  _ Floukru  _ were known for their peaceful nature, choosing to remain neutral, and they were well liked by all the other clans because they provided fish for different supplies that the ocean and the beaches couldn’t offer them. 

The thing that interested Mari the most about the trading convoys were the horses. 

The gentle giants fascinated her to no end, from the very moment she first saw one, supported by the strong arms of Luna as the woman lifted her up to gently pet the animal’s head, eyes wide and mouth agape. From that moment onward, Mari spent more time with horses than she did with people, but Luna always made sure she got the proper amount of socialization for a girl her age. Horses were easier to understand than people, they were loyal, and wouldn’t leave you. Horses wouldn’t leave their foals to go explore the unknown, they would take their foals  _ with  _ them.

As soon as she was old enough, Luna got Mari her very own horse from a trade with the  _ Plaikru _ , a wild young stallion the color of wheat with darker socks and hair, and for the two of them, it was love at first sight. The trader with the horses, a man named Jax, had looked dubiously at the four year old girl as she skipped around excitedly towards the foal, warning Luna that  _ that  _ one was wild at heart, but Luna had merely smirked and told the man to watch. 

Mari skidded to a halt in front of the huffing animal, trying to escape the rope around his neck, and gently put hands on either side of his face, her own blue eyes staring deep into his dark ones, and he calmed instantly, nudging her softly. Jax was staring openly, an astonished expression on his face, as Mari turned around excitedly to tell Luna that this was the one, she could tell. She named him  _ Zodon _ , fate, because it was as though the two of them were destined to be steed and rider. 

Mari grew alongside her horse, chestnut colored hair lengthening, and she twisted Zodon’s mane into braids to match her own, often weaving flowers into them, and the horse nickered softly when she did so, affectionate and soft with the girl. Any others who tried to approach or ride him, with the exception of Luna, were huffed at angrily in warning, and those who dared get too close barely escaped without a hoof shaped bruise somewhere on their person. Mari fed him apples from the trees and carrots from the ground, spoiling him at every opportunity, and the foal grew quickly to a fine stallion who was fiercely protective of his rider, a kind hearted girl with the ocean in her eyes and the galloping of herds of horses thrumming in her heart. 

Because she followed Luna everywhere, Mari rode across many different clan territories, and saw many people and many sights. Her favorite place to stop was the capital, Polis, where the markets were filled with all kinds of different foods, and the people were always friendly. It was a sharp contrast from the cold demeanor of the Ice Nation, who were ruled under the iron fist of their queen, Nia. Mari had met the woman only once, and wasn’t in any hurry to do so again, unsettled by her ruthless gaze, and even more wary of the girl who trailed after her, sour expression stuck to her face. The prince, Roan, was alright, and seemed in a constant state of boredom, but Zodon had let the man approach him, so Mari assumed that meant he was alright. Horses were excellent judges of character, after all.

Her other favorite place to go were the plains where Zodon had been born, the other children there just as comfortable on horses as she was, and while Luna negotiated prices, Mari was free to race through the fields with the others, pushing Zodon forward, to go  _ faster _ , gripping to him tightly as she could, relishing in the feeling of the wind in her hair and the clopping of hooves in her ears, and the absolute freedom she felt. None of the horses were as fast as hers, as filled with life, and Zodon preened under all the attention, strutting rather ridiculously as though he understood their praises, to which Mari giggled and called him a peacock.

One night, a jealous man tries to steal the proud horse, but is sorely surprised when the animal puts up a fight, allowing time for Mari and Luna to be roused from their tent and go outside to see what the commotion is, only to find a man cowering and trying desperately to scramble away from the enraged stallion. The small girl rushes forward to quell her best friend, but somewhere in the flurry the thief knicks her arm with a knife, and Luna can’t help the gasp when she sees the blood dripping from the wound, inky and black like the night sky, and Mari is terrified. Zodon senses this and looks up sharply, as though trying to pick out a threat, but finds none, because the thing that is terrifying his rider so much is her own blood.

When attendants from Polis arrive to the edge of the sea to collect her, Mari’s eyes are filled with tear. Ariel hugs her tightly, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead, and Luna unties the seashell necklace from her neck and fastens it around Mari, silently handing her the reigns to Zodon. Mari is thankful, at least, that he gets to come with her. The bald man, Titus, had protested when the horse knocked him into the mud, but the man with him, Gustus, had laughed jovially and told Mari that he very much liked her horse. 

When Mari leaves after one final embrace from her aunt, her parents are still off at sea, and she finds that she misses them less and less as the years move along. They’d chosen to leave their daughter, and now she was choosing to leave behind their memory, directing Zodon in the direction of Polis with her head held high and her jaw clenched, refusing to show any signs of weakness. 

When she arrives, she recognizes a familiar face. Ellis hailed from the Plains, and Mari had seen her sometimes, when the girl chose to accompany one of her fathers, Jax, on trading trips. The two of them bonded over their mutual love for horses, and Ellis shows her to the stables, where her own stallion, Xander, is already situated. Much to Mari’s delight, Zodon tolerates the other horse, and she knows that she and Ellis will be good friends.

A part of her whispers that she shouldn’t become attached to these children, because Luna had told her of the Conclave, and it would be difficult to kill people she was fond of. Mari didn’t much like the idea of killing in the first place, taking after the peaceful nature of the clan she was born in, which earned her a friend in Aden, who rescued baby birds and trapped wolf pups and stole sweets from the bakeries to share with his fellow nightbloods. She is younger than them, at seven years old, but she keeps up just as well, her training with Luna aiding in the transition to training with Lexa. It is not long after she comes that an older boy from the Desert Clan, Pep, follows, sun-kissed sin, crooked smile, sandy brown hair in all, and Mari has a tiny bit of a crush on him at first, but it soon fades as the two of them become more and more like brother and sister. 

The dynamic of all of the nightbloods falls into place easily, behaving as a normal family would, except on a much larger scale. There were squabbles and rivalries, but at the end of the day, they were all siblings, and loved each other dearly. Mari had frequent races on horseback with Ellis, and later learned from Daya how to stay on a bucking bull, as the girl from the Delphi Clan said that it was a common pastime for her people. Mari taught Pep how to swim, as the boy from the desert had never been even  _ close  _ to a body of water large enough to swim in, and often led weekend trips to the river outside of Polis so they could splash around and relax after their grueling schedule of training.

Mari loves any excuse to get to ride Zodon around, so when Anya tells the nightbloods that they’ll be travelling to TonDC, she gets ridiculously excited. Trips like these remind her of the days she’d spent trailing along behind her aunt, meeting people across all twelve clans and being able to soak up the beauty of the world in general. The others are even more excited than she is, because most of them aren’t used to travelling, and Mari regails them of tales of her travels as they make their way over, Pep whistling a tune and Wiley dancing happily along. 

When people fall from the sky, Mari itches to meet them, because this is a new people that she has never encountered before. From a distance she observes them, and there is one, a girl with the sky in her eyes and hair the color of wheat, that for some reason reminds her greatly of Costia. She missed the dark skinned healer, whose steady hands had cleaned and sealed many wounds, and this blonde reminded her of Costia so much. She knew that, if this girl and Lexa were to meet, they would either get along like a house on fire or be at each other’s throats like feral animals, but either way Mari thought she wouldn’t ever get to find out, as Anya rushes them back to Polis and when word comes of the  _ Skaikru’s  _ ring of fire, the commander is furious.

As it turned out, Clarke both complimented Lexa and challenged her in every possible way, and Mari admired her for her fearlessness. She herself would never be able to be so blatantly disrespectful towards her  _ heda _ , not that she would ever  _ want  _ to be disrespectful to Lexa, who was more of a mother to her than Elle ever would be, and she balked when Lexa  _ bowed  _ to her.  _ Heda  _ bowed to  _ no one. _

But that was what Clarke called herself. No one.

Mari knew that she was a lot more than that, she could tell.

While Nam taught Clarke how to properly throw knives, and Koda taught her to climb trees, it was Mari who excitedly led her to the stables to see the horses, and she beamed happily when she heard Clarke’s breath hitch and her eyes widen in appreciation, staring almost reverently at the animals. When the blonde girl explained to her younger companion that they didn’t have animals up in space, Mari was appalled, and smiled softly to herself when Zodon allowed Clarke to approach and pet him, neighing softly while Clarke grinned from ear to ear. She rattled off facts about horses whenever Clarke was around, and the commander of death never seemed to mind, instead listening attentively and filing away the information for later, never once discouraging Mari from her passions, for which the girl was grateful. 

When Lexa dies, it is sudden and harsh and catches them all off-guard. Mari knows that her time is limited, so she steals away to the stables and hugs Zodon with all the strength she can muster, feeding him apples and all of his favorite fruits, and he can sense that something is wrong because he nickers sadly and nudges her head, big soulful eyes observing tear stained cheeks. Mari knows that she won’t be making it out of the Conclave alive. 

She entrusts him with Clarke, practically begs the older girl to care for him, and Clarke nods wordlessly, still overcome with grief, and Mari lets a bit of herself rest, because she knows that her best friend in the world will be cared for after she has left the world.

She feels the blade in her stomach before she sees it, and as she slumps to the ground, her hand reaches up to fiddle with the seashell necklace that her aunt had given her so long ago, and as her eyes flutter shut, she hears the crashing of the ocean waves and the cacophony of noise from a herd of wild horses running off into the distance, and a soft smile creeps its way across her face. 

When she arrives in a meadow, skin free of scars and blemishes, and sees Lexa smiling at her, and Ellis stroking the mane of her first horse, Xander, Mari grins, and looks down at the world below her with an entirely new perspective. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, kudos and comments are greatly appreciated! Come hang out on tumblr, [hedaclexa](http://www.hedaclexa.tumblr.com), I'm less than two hundred away from 4000 followers *happy dance*. I'll see you soon with the next update.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	5. Pep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He was born in the dry heat of the desert with an unquenchable thirst for adventure and a tongue made for telling stories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologizing ahead of time for any typos/grammatical errors. I remain beta'less and tend to just publish chapters once I finish writing them, but I hope you like it anyways.

Pep was born in the harsh heat of the desert, and his first gulping breath resulting in his first cough, grains of sand irritating his soft throat. He would have to get used to the sand, it was everywhere, after all. Life in the deserts was harsh, unforgiving, and so were the people in it. He has an older brother, a lanky boy named Lennox, who explained to him when he was older that there had been a child in-between the two of them, a girl, but she had been given as sacrifice to the desert because she was missing a hand. 

Though surrounded by harshness and a dead earth, Pep is filled with life. 

As soon as he can walk, he is toddling alongside his family happily, wearing long garments to keep the sand out of his eyes, but it always has a habit of getting everywhere, no matter how hard you try to fight it. He’s certain that he has more sand in his veins than water. 

Lennox is much older than him, the two brothers nine years apart, and he is more nurturing than both of their parents combined. It is he who shows Pep the best way to extract water from the prickly cacti that riddled the ground, how to sharpen his spears and search for drinkable water. But, perhaps most importantly, Lennox is the one who shows Pep how to tell stories. 

There isn’t much to do for fun in the desert, being too hot to run around unless absolutely necessary, so they went about their chores in relative silence most of the time, kept company only by one another. Pep, being a young child, bores easily, and Lennox talks to keep him entertained. 

Pep admires how his older brother can come up with stories on the spot, making them interesting and filled with vibrant characters and twisting plotlines off the tip of his tongue. Pep always listens with rapt attention, soaking up the words and the way his brother arranges phrases. The stories start in trigedasleng, but then Lennox begins translating them to gonasleng, as he insists that it is something that Pep will need to learn eventually. Lennox has skills that most of the children in their village don’t possess, and it is he who teaches Pep how to write. 

As a child confined to the harsh climate of the desert, Pep longed for adventure. He wished to travel far and wide across the land, exploring the high snowy mountains to the glimmering lakes and expansive forests, rich and green and filled with life, to the cool dark underground fortress of the shadow people. His heart aches for it. The wind whispers promises of lands far away in his ears, and the images stirred by Lennox’s stories dance in his dreams. 

His mother calls him a dreamer and shakes her head at the two of them, claiming that there is no way they’ll be able to go out and explore the world like they so dearly desire. It isn’t in the cards for them. The  _ Sankru  _ are a simple people, and rarely leave the border of the desert, preferring to keep to themselves. To leave your  _ kru  _ was unheard of. 

Pep was often downtrodden by his mother’s words, but Lennox made sure to always keep a smile on his face, bringing his younger brother closer to him and continuing to tell him stories. As time went on, they became more centralized on the lives of the brothers, and Lennox weaved tales of two brothers who would conquer the whole world together, swimming like fish through rivers and oceans, scampering like monkeys through the trees, and roaming the mountains like the strongest bears. Lennox kindled hope inside of his younger brother, a flame that would continue to grow despite the buffering conditions, and would spread quickly through his body, enveloping him completely. 

When Pep is nine, and Lennox is eighteen, they do something completely stupid. 

They run away. 

It was inevitable, really, the desert had never been their home, not really. Their hearts longed for more, yearned for adventure, for exploration, and these were things that endless expanses of sand could not provide. 

By this point, Lennox is a fully fledged warrior, having completed his training, and he is confident that he will be able to care for himself and his younger brother. Nomads were generally accepted by the other clans. Sure, they were regarded with suspicion, but Lennox knew that would be alleviated with his brother with him, all sandy colored hair and bright innocent golden brown eyes and a crooked smile, the picture of innocence and youth. His proportions are lanky and awkward, and Lennox knows that he will grow to be a mountain of a man in time. 

While Pep has always learned from his older brother, Lennox takes him under his wing officially as his  _ seken _ , and in between long days of travelling on foot, the two train. The younger boy is excellent with the spear and the quarterstaff, but takes longer to pick up the basics of swordsmanship, heavy blades throwing him off balance. The two are brothers, but they are so much closer than that, more like extensions of one another. 

Lennox keeps a journal with him, tightly bound, and fills the pages with details of his travels with Pep. Once, they were caught in the middle of a skirmish between the  _ Gloukru  _ and  _ Sheidkru _ , and barely escaped with their heads on their shoulders. The fierce battles cries still rang in Pep’s ears, but he couldn’t ignore the rush of adrenaline that flowed through his veins whenever he recalled the memory. Suddenly, the idea of becoming a warrior seemed more appealing, but he didn’t wish to leave his brother’s side.

The two of them would be together forever. 

But as Lennox had once told his brother, plans never lasted long in battle. 

The two brothers stumble across another nomad, a curious girl named Emori who is only a few years younger than Lennox. She is a thief at heart, but the brothers intrigue her, and she tags along with them instead of robbing them blind, and the three strike up a tentative friendship, laughing with one another and telling stories as they travelled. 

They hadn’t expected her to attract such trouble.

There’s a fight. 

The details are blurred in Pep’s mind, but he remembers his brother, tall and strong, eyes blazing as he took on three men at once. Emori aids him, taking out two with her knives, and Pep helps hold their defense, doing as best as an eleven year old can. One of the men slices his arm, and he winces as he hears the gasps at the sight of his blood, inky and black like the night. The rest of the men run away, but the last jabs Lennox fatally in the stomach before scampering off. The tall brown haired boy crumbles, and Pep runs towards him helplessly, pressing small hands into the wound in a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding. 

“ _ Hei,” _ Lennox chokes out, a smile on his face despite the obvious pain he’s in, “ _ chil au, strik bro. Ai gonplei ste odon.” _

“ _ Nou!”  _ Pep practically shouts back, sobs wracking his lanky frame and tears running down his cheeks. “ _ Yu gonplei  _ nou  _ ste odon, Lennox.” _ The older boy shakes his head and manages a sort of laugh, though the sound comes out choked, and there is blood leaking out of his mouth. 

Calloused hands reach into the traveller’s bag at his side, and Pep cries when he pulls out two journals, one that is easily recognizable as his own, and one that Pep has never seen before. He pushes them towards his younger brother, breath stuttering. 

“My story ends here,” he whispered, almost tenderly, forcing the journals, storybooks, into Pep’s shaking, bloodstained hands, “but you can continue them. Make your own,  _ strik bro _ .”

“I will,” Pep swore, tears still falling down his face, “I promise.” Lennox smiled at him and turned to Emori, who looked guilty for intruding on such a personal moment. 

“Take him to Polis,” he instructed her, “so he can train with his fellow  _ natblidas _ . Make sure he just there safe,  _ sha?” _

“ _ Sha,” _ Emori confirmed shakily, nodding her head. Lennox smiled once more and gripped Pep’s free hand tightly, rubbing soothing circles on the back of his palm as he felt the life beginning to leave him, slowly bleeding out. 

“Once upon a time, in a land far to the south in the sands of the desert, there lived two brothers, who had wanderlust in their veins and adventure in their hearts, who set out to conquer the world, one step at a time. The older brother was strong and gentle, and he led his little brother on adventures to see the greatest treasures the world had to offer, journeying through forests and around mountains and across deserts. The younger brother was filled with life and enthusiasm, and never failed to bring a smile to his older brother’s face, and in their journeys, the older brother came to realize that the greatest treasure the world had to offer didn’t come in the form of an underground fortress or busy city, rather it came on two legs, trailing faithfully besides him.” His breath caught once more and Lennox stuttered, pain evident in his posture. 

“You’re special, Pep,” he whispered, unable to speak loudly, “never forget that.”

Lennox died with his little brother cradling his head to his lap, echoes of his last story still ringing in the younger boy’s ears. With the help of Emori, Pep buried the body in a meadow filled with flowers. It was a beautiful last resting place, Lennox would have liked it. 

When Pep arrives to Polis, dutifully dragged there by Emori, his heart is heavy and his spirits low, red-stained storybooks tucked into the deep crevices of his travel bag. 

Lexa welcomes him readily, and he watches with sad eyes as Emori slinks away, knowing he probably won’t see the other girl ever again. Her spirit is too wild to remain in one place for too long, and he didn’t hold that against her. When he arrives, there are already four children there, but he is the oldest.

He ignores them at first, choosing to distance himself, but loving them is inevitable. 

Ellis drags him into games of chess in the beginning, neither of them talking, just focusing on the game ahead of them. Nam offers to teach him how to properly throw knives as Mari observes the two of them with a keen gaze. For the first couple of weeks, she follows Pep around like a lovesick puppy, but the boy is in no mood to make friends, so he pushes her and everyone else away. 

It is Aden who cracks him first. 

The blonde haired blue-eyed boy has the patience of a saint, and notices the sag in Pep’s shoulders as he walks, the drag in his feet, but sees the glint in his eyes when he mentions the library, and pulls the sandy haired boy along with him. Once inside the grand building, Pep’s eyes hungrily take in the sight of hundreds upon thousands of stories, all waiting to be read, and he feels Aden push a book into his hands, the title reading  _ The Canterbury Tales _ , along with a handful of honeycakes to munch on. 

“You look like you need them,” he offered with a shrug when Pep asked, and on that day, in the library, sitting next to the boy with his head buried in a book about wizards, munching on honeycakes in relative silence, Pep feels, for the first time since his brother’s death,  _ happy _ . Bit by bit, honeycake by honeycake, the life begins to flow back into the once jovial boy, and the old Pep comes back with a ferocity the others hadn’t expected. 

He tells them stories of his brother every night, about his bravery, his selflessness, his humor. He tells them about the stars in Lennox’s bright blue eyes, of the earth in his dark brown hair, and sun in his tanned skin. He reads countless entries from Lennox’s book, and begins picking up pens to write his own. Every time his hand curls around the utensil, neatly imprinting words onto paper, he can feel his brother’s ghost standing behind him, can almost hear him smile and tell him  _ good job, little brother, pretty soon you’ll be writing more than me.  _

Pep aspires to be to the others what Lennox was to him, an older brother, a storyteller, a writer. On nights that thunder shakes the tower, the others crowd around his bed and, illuminated by candlelight, he tells them stories, filled with life and adventures of two boys lost in the woods, always with happy endings, because their lives are difficult enough as initiates. 

Of all of the nightbloods, Pep forms the closest relationship with Sammy. 

The boy is quiet and observant, and something about him tugs on Pep’s heartstrings, because he’s so small, so withdrawn, and he tugs at Pep’s heartstrings in every way possible. The smaller boy is absolutely terrified of thunder, so on nights when the sky is stormy and loud, Pep enlists the help of the others, and they build magnificent blanket forts in the center of the room, and he tells them stories illuminated by candlelight. Often, the stories are about them, and their imaginary travels throughout the world.

Pep’s soul is gentle, but he can be fierce. 

He manages to keep up with even Nam’s fierce barrage of blows when sparring, and tackles Daya to the ground with little hesitation whenever she begins taunting him. The sprite-like girl always finds a way to rile him up, because she  _ loves  _ wrestling, and the best way to make sure he doesn’t go easy on her is to make him mad. They usually come out of the squabbles with black eyes and bloodied lips, and Lexa scowls at them and points them in the direction of the healer’s tent, rubbing her temples and claiming that they were the cause of her intense headaches. 

When people fall from the sky, his stories begin to change.

Now there are children leaping from one star to another, soaring through the sky as though they were great birds of prey, the world a spec below them. He crafts tales of flying ships and delinquent adolescents, planning their great escape to the ground. Somehow, his words make the Skaikru less intimidating. Some of the children that have fallen appear to be only a year or two older than his own fourteen summers, including the one that Nam accidentally ran through with a spear (nobody ever lets him live that down).

When Lexa forms an alliance with the Sky People, he begins telling a story of the star that fell from the sky and crushed the mountain, freeing its prisoners from its treacherous depths. He hadn’t known that his story would come true, not at all, but he had hopes. None of his stories have ever come true before, but  _ Klark kom Skaikru _ is a falling star if he ever saw one. 

She comes to Polis beaten and broken and angry at everything and everyone, and Pep doesn’t blame her. In a way, the girl reminds him of himself in the months following his brother’s death, and her stoniness reminds him of Lexa after Nia sent her lover, his caretaker, Costia’s head to her in a box. It’s the expression of loss, and also betrayal. Though people whisper that she commands death, the legendary  _ wanheda _ , Pep sees that she is just a girl with the weight of the world on her shoulders trying to keep her people afloat. In that sense, she and Lexa are very alike, and he can understand why the two of them are drawn together. 

Pep has never understood romance.

His parents weren’t particularly fond of one another, kept together by a marriage arrangement between two villages in the desert, as well as an obligation to their children, but Pep had never been exposed to romantic love. He loved Lennox, and Lennox loved him, but that was a different love, the same love he shared with his fellow nightbloods, as well as with Lexa. But the idea of romance made him rather ill, and he always refused to add any glimpse of it to his stories. With Lexa and Clarke, however, it felt natural, as easy as breathing, and he could practically  _ feel  _ the love resonating between the two girls, the two lost, broken, battered souls, yearning desperately for one another but not knowing how. 

It’s pure and wholesome and good, and he doesn’t feel as sickened by the idea after watching the two of them, but doubts he will ever experience it himself, but he begins to tell the others stories about how the Sky fell in love with the Ground, and they fought tirelessly to be together. 

It’s a nice story. 

But, as it seems with all nice stories, it is ended far too soon.

Lexa’s death shakes them all to the core, and they are left shell-shocked, unsure of what to do with themselves. Her death had been inevitable, of course, but it was always perceived as an abstract concept, something that wouldn’t happen until they were much, much older. On the night before the Conclave, Pep gathers together his wits for one last time, and pulls the furs into the center of the room, constructing a fort like he had countless times in the past, and sits down, cross-legged, waiting for the others to join him.

“Once upon a time, there was a girl who was born in the thick of the forest, the scent of pine clinging to her skin, hands calloused from gripping harsh bark in order to climb to the highest heights to observe the world around her. From a young age, she was fascinated by the sky and the secrets it held, but knew that she would never be able to reach it, no matter how many trees she climbed. So the girl looked for strength on the ground…” The others listened with rapt attention, and Pep pretended not to notice the tears tugging at their eyes as he continued his story, about this girl so filled with life who had been beaten down again and again, with only the sky as her comfort, until, finally, the sky came down to comfort her. 

In his last moments, Pep remembers this, and he turns his eyes skyward, and a soft smile crosses his lips, because he knows that there will be people waiting to greet him on the other side. 

Lexa is smiling kindly at him, and Ellis has already tackled Aden to the floor, messing with his hair and calling him a  _ branwada _ . Mari splashes water in Nam’s face, and the two of them have started something of a battle in the stream. Pep’s golden eyes, however, look past the girl who had become his  _ nomon _ , and his heart fills at warmth. 

He rests by the willow tree at the edge of the meadow where Pep had laid him forever, leaning comfortably into its curves and whistling a soft tune from his flute, and when he sees Pep, he beckons him over. 

“Come,  _ strik bro _ , it seems you have plenty of stories to tell me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Next up is Lysh of the Lake People! 
> 
> As always, comments/kudos are greatly appreciated, come tell me who your favorite duckling is so far, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Come hang out on tumblr, [hedaclexa](http://www.hedaclexa.tumblr.com) where I scream about gay things and obsess over girls.


	6. Lysh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She was soft and quiet, often forgotten, but never unimportant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter really didn't want to come but I listened to April Showers from Bambi on repeat and suddenly it happened.

As a general rule of thumb amongst the grounders, pregnancies with multiples were considered to be bad luck, because this usually resulted in early labor, and the chances of imperfections in the children that  _ were  _ born (if they survived) were high, and all those with imperfections post-birth were returned to nature. 

Nobody in all of  _ Leikru  _ thought that their Captain’s sister Anna’s pregnancy would end successfully, but by some miracle,  _ it did.  _

It was the first birth of triplets that ended in all three children being alive and  _ perfect _ , if not a little small. The oldest and largest of the three was a boy with inky black hair and stubborn brown eyes named Buck, and the middle child, a girl with long black ringlets of hair and fiery blue eyes, was Fallow, and the two of them were always fighting about something. The youngest, and smallest, was a girl with soft, straight light brown hair and curious brown eyes. Lysh, from an early age, was the peacemaker between her two siblings. 

Though they fought constantly, the one thing the older two could agree on was that Lysh was too kind and small to not love, so they both protected her with the ferocity of entire armies. Their love made up for the lack of attention from her parents, because she wasn’t as strong as Buck, nor as smart or resourceful as Fallow, and therefore, relatively useless in the scheme of things. It was Buck and Fallow who assured her that she was, in fact, useful. 

Their days are filled with lazy swims in the shallow ends of the lake, and fishing excursions with their parents. Lysh loves nothing more than to go underneath the water in the depths of the lakes and open her eyes just to observe the frantically swimming fish in the green hue of the water. There is a sense of peace underwater, where no judgements can reach her ears, and she can just let herself float and  _ be. _

The Lake People were situated in a valley in-between mountains, with forests surrounding them, the center of commerce being the city, Altla, near the giant lakes themselves. Fish of many different varieties inhabited the waters, and rivers leading to and from provided excellent paths for boats carrying items to trade. All in all, they were a relatively peaceful people, like the  _ Floukru _ , and relied on commerce to ensure alliances with their neighboring clans. They were most wary of the  _ Roukru _ , the people of the rock line, who lived in-between mountains and scaled their rocky surfaces like goats, tough and sharp like the place they called home. 

Buck and Fallow often wandered to the edge of the mountain pass, trying to catch a glimpse of these elusive people, so Lysh followed them dutifully every time, knowing that if she left her idiot brother and sister to their own devices they’d likely start a war. This isn’t far from the truth, because on one particularly sunny afternoon, Lysh takes a little longer than usual trailing after her older siblings, and arrives to their familiar spot at the edge of the mountain pass to find Buck throwing stones up the mountain, trying to gain someone’s attention. 

His ruckus garners the attention of a girl who appears their age, with wildly curly blonde hair, grey paint smeared across her face, making her dark blue eyes pop, and she  _ leaps down  _ to tackle Buck, the two of them falling down in a pile of flailing limbs. 

Fallow is too busy doubled over laughing to do anything, so Lysh takes it upon herself to separate the two of them, which wasn’t as easy as she’d initially assumed it would be. After a few failed attempts, she eventually settles for just wedging herself in between the two, earning a sharp hair tug from Buck, who hadn’t yet realized that it was his baby sister he was attacking, and a headbutt to the nose from the  _ Roukru _ girl. 

Upon realizing that there is black blood leaking from his little sister’s nose, Buck springs away, and the blonde follows him a second later, eyes wide. At first, Lysh thinks that the black stains on the girl’s face are just splatters of her own nosebleed, but she soon finds that the black liquid is leaking from a cut on the blonde’s eyebrow where Buck had snagged her with a rock. The weight of the color of the liquid doesn’t fully set in until Lysh notices the tears in Fallow’s eyes and the horror in Buck’s.

Her departure from  _ Leikru  _ is filled with tears from her siblings, and her parents send her off stiffly. She can see echoes of regret in their stormy eyes, because after all the years of them thinking her useless, she proved to be the rarest of her siblings. The bald man, Titus, isn’t a great conversationalist, so Lysh and Lyz bond on their journey to Polis. 

“Sorry for almost breaking your nose,” the girl says sheepishly, shrugging her shoulders and rubbing the back of her neck, as though she’s unaccustomed to apologizing. 

“It’s fine,” Lysh assured, “Buck was asking for a beating anyways, I’m not sure what got into him.” 

“So no hard feelings?” Lyz asks hopefully, trotting alongside Lysh, as Titus had allowed them off of the horses to stretch their legs for a little while, but the blonde’s scraggly grey cat, Maverick, still rests on the other girl’s mare’s head. It’s one of the oddest things Lysh has ever seen. 

“None,” Lysh says with a soft smile, and the other girl grins brightly, moving to skip, but yelping as she trips over her own feet and tumbles forward, much to Lysh’s amusement. 

Titus didn’t let them walk after that. 

The two of them quickly become best friends, Lysh’s patience and peaceful nature balancing out Lyz’s hotheadedness and overall brash personality. The brunette girl finds a kindred spirit in Aden, who greets them both with wide smiles and honeycakes. Lysh adores him instantly, but it takes Lyz a while to warm up to him, grumbling about the boy being  _ heda’s favorite _ , and too much of a show off. If anything, Lyz and Nam are the showoffs, but Lysh doesn’t voice her opinions when her friend goes off on a tangent. 

Lysh especially has a softness for  _ heda’s _ lover, Costia, who was a brilliant healer and amazing conversationalist, coupled with a razor-sharp wit and quick humor. She was everything that Titus wasn’t. As spring rolls in, marking the first full season Lysh has been in Polis, she sees a baby bird struggling on the ground, its wing bent oddly. 

She names the small finch Fern, and quickly carries her to Costia, accompanied by an equally worried Aden, who frets like a mother hen. 

“ _ Hei, strikwadas _ ,” Costia greets with a smile when they enter the room, “what can I do for you?” Gently, Lysh lowers Fern onto the table, and Costia bites back a laugh at how genuinely concerned the two nightbloods in front of her look. 

Over the next month, the three of them work to nurse the baby bird back to health, and she flourishes under their care, downy feathers beginning to change into the permanent adult ones. However, when they try to release Fern into the wild, she keeps returning to Lysh, whom she imprinted on, so Koda fashions the girl a beautiful wicker cage to keep the bird in, and Fern finds a permanent residence within Polis tower, kept far out of reach of Maverick, who prowls around in the shadows when he thinks the others aren’t looking, but is always dragged away by Sammy, who keeps a keen eye on him. The little finch is one of the only reminders of Costia when she is killed by the Ice Queen.

They’re a rather dysfunctional family, that’s for sure. 

Previous clan rivalries are dissolved, though it’s hard to ignore ideals that had been pushed at you from a young age. Lexa always tells them, though, that in order to be  _ heda _ , one must look at all the people and not see things such as clan borders. To  _ heda _ , they are all one people under the Coalition, and it is  _ heda’s  _ duty to protect each and every one of them, regardless of previous alliances or wars. 

While Lysh has never had the speed of Wiley, the agility of Daya, the brashness of Lyz, the finesse of Nam, the strategy of Ellis, nor the overall skill of Aden, she is still a fairly competent fighter under Lexa’s tutelage. In another life, she would have followed in Costia’s steps as a healer, or perhaps a fisher, but in this one, she has been preordained by some higher force to be a fighter, a leader, a diplomat. She learns how to properly throw a punch and, even more importantly, how to dodge them, so she can soon tussle on the ground with the likes of Lyz and Daya and not get  _ completely  _ massacred. 

Every night, bruised but smiling, she returns to the room shared by all the nightbloods, and informs Fern of her daily activities. She knows, logically, that the bird can’t understand her, but it’s nice to talk about it to someone who wasn’t experiencing the same training alongside her. It’s in those quiet moments, just her and Fern, that Lysh misses her siblings the most. She thinks about them often, wondering if they’d driven each other mad in her absence or had finally learned to tolerate one another. She dreams of the lakes, and forms a bond with Mari, who has similar pinings for the ocean, and Wiley, who misses the breeze from the sea filling his lungs. 

None of the training offered by Lexa, however, prepares them from  _ maunon  _ falling from the sky. 

They are children, really, and don’t seem like much of a threat. There is fire in their bones, though, that much Lysh can tell. They are clumsy like baby deer, stomping through the forests as though it was a game to see how many twigs they could break in one walk, lumbering movements so different from the grace of those from the twelve clans. There is a danger in their rambunctious shouting, and she knows that she is right to be wary of them. 

This apprehension is confirmed when this new  _ Skaikru  _ burn three hundred warriors alive, among them Anya, who had training the nightbloods alongside Lexa, and Lysh, for perhaps the first time in her life, feels hate stir within her, and she finds herself wishing that Nam had thrown that spear just a little harder in his surprise. When she tells all of this to Fern, the finch chirps at her in a way that seems almost concerned, but Lysh knows that is her own imagination, because birds cannot possibly understand humans. 

She had studied all sorts of aviation after the acquisition of Fern, fascinated by their ability to fly, to take to the skies whenever they so pleased. She can’t help but compare these new invaders to birds, because they fell from the sky, and the realization hits her suddenly. 

These children, all hundred of them, were merely wounded baby birds, much like Fern was when Lysh first rescued her. All they needed to flourish was a healing hand and direction, a model to lead them through life in the unknown, but instead they’d been greeted by spears to the chest and three hundred angry warriors. She then understands their reactions, as all animals will do whatever it takes to survive, regardless of morales, and Lysh finds that she no longer hates these  _ Skaikru _ , merely pities them.

Clarke, though, she cannot bring herself to pity. 

When the blonde is dragged into Polis forcefully by the disgraced prince, Roan, Lysh can’t help but be reminded of Lyz. There is a fire in her eyes that matches that of her best friend, and a set to her jaw that reminds Lysh of Lexa. Her spirit is strong, hardened by constant loss, sacrifice, and now, betrayal. Everything in  _ wanheda’s _ life should have made her just that,  _ wanheda _ , a cold-blooded killer, but Lysh soon learns, along with the other nightbloods, that Clarke is anything but that. 

She has the softness of Costia, but the edge possessed by all leaders, making her a match for their  _ heda _ . Her hands are steady and healing, but her eyes set and cold, allowing herself to relax very rarely. She is putty ready to be molded, and the nightbloods offer her the direction that Lysh knew she so desperately needed, teaching her their different crafts as quickly as they can, because time on the ground is precious, and one has to make every second count. 

“Come,” Lysh beckons, and Clarke follows her dutifully, away from the other nightbloods, who are enjoying a day off. She leads her back to their communal room, where personal items are strewn around messily, and pushes Clarke in the direction of the finely crafted cage that Fern rests in, “this is Fern.”

“She’s beautiful,” Clarke says, accepting the bird into her hands with a soft smile, “how’d you get her?” And Lysh tells her the story of the baby bird who fell from the sky and broke her wing, and how she was able to grow strong and healthy, and hopes that Clarke understands the hidden meaning behind her words. She is not a storyteller, like Pep, but she tries her hardest. From the tenderness that the healer holds the finch with, Lysh thinks she does. 

When Lexa dies, killed by a bullet aimed for  _ wanheda _ , it is as though the life itself is sucked out of Polis tower alongside the leader they had all grown to love as their own  _ nomon _ . Lysh spends her last days with her new siblings, especially Lyz, who has been with her since the first day, and spends extra time with Fern, who seems to know that something is wrong, chirping sadly. 

Right before the Conclave begins, Lysh pulls Clarke aside. 

“If I don’t make it,” she said shakily, fighting back tears, because she  _ knows  _ that she won’t be the next commander, “set Fern free.” Clarke can only nod before Lysh is being led away by Titus, who has somehow escaped death after murdering the commander, and being forced into the prepared arena. 

True to her sentiments, she does not become the next commander. 

The  _ natblida kom Azgeda _ makes sure of that, and the last thing that Lysh hears before her eyes flutter shut are the enraged cries of Lyz, who has doubtlessly seen her crumpled form. There is pain only for a few moments longer, before there is warmth, and her eyes flutter open to see Aden, who has pulled her into a tight hug. She waits patiently for Lyz but, for once, the blonde girl doesn’t keep her waiting for long, and the two are reunited in this meadow, running free under the careful watch of Lexa, ever the mother duck. 

Down below, Lysh can see the lakes of her home, and sees Buck and Fallow, bickering over something as usual, and though it’s melancholic, she is filled with warmth and love, and knows that, up here, with those she loved most as company, where she can watch those still living roam and see the birds soar through the sky, she can finally be at peace. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guy enjoyed! Next up is Lyz, Lysh's partner in crime. 
> 
> As always, comments/kudos are greatly appreciated, especially comments, because they fuel the writing juices. Come hang out on tumblr, [hedaclexa](http://www.hedaclexa.tumblr.com) where you can obsess about the ducklings with me.


	7. Lyz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She was anger and passion, filled with unbridled rage and prone to jumping headfirst into battle, and fell far too often, but never failed to get back up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you didn't notice, Lyz & Lysh are inspired by Alicia Clark/ADC as well as Elyza Lex/ET. And as someone pointed out on my tumblr, yes, Pep was named after the Buzzfeed duckling, Pip. Good catch.

The people of the Rock Line, or  _ Roukru _ , were expected to be graceful, as it was a part of their survival. While the  _ maunon _ resided within the hollowed out interior of their mountain, their people lived  _ on  _ the mountain, for the most part, and their villages were scattered throughout the rocky lines, and climbing was a necessity to get to certain places. 

Lyz was born halfway up the mountain, a part of a village built on a cave wall and extending out to a small plateau. Like all her fellows, climbing was her specialty, but she somehow managed to be the clumsiest child her village had seen in decades. There was rarely a day that small drops of black blood were dripping from her person, palms of her hands calloused due to their perpetual state of torn skin, but her village elders saw no reason to deliver her to Polis so early, and allowed her to enjoy a childhood for as long as she could. 

They soon came to regret that decision, however, because Lyz was always,  _ always _ picking fights. 

It didn’t matter how much bigger than her the people were that she picked fights with, not to Lyz. She was a hot-headed girl, to say the least, and quite the headache for her mother, who was the village healer. She constantly scolded her daughter, trying to impress upon the blonde girl that if she wanted to ensure she stay with her family longer, she couldn’t let too many people know about her black blood. Those in her village were alright, as they accepted the advice of the elders, but some of the others might not be as accepting. Lyz, however, never headed her mother’s instructions, and continued to tussle with whoever had annoyed her that day, which was usually more than one person. She simply had too much energy within her to sit around and do nothing like her mother would have preferred. 

Her favorite sparring partner by far was her older brother, Micah, who had lived to see sixteen snowfalls. The older boy never seemed to be lacking resentment for his little sister, and she wasn’t particularly fond of him either, so their fights were the most eventful and the most genuine, as neither of them wanted to go easy on the other. It drove their mother insane, but they didn’t really care. The fighting helped them get along better, in an odd way, as a way to relieve stress and purge themselves of the excess anger that was always present after the death of their father, who had been killed in a skirmish with the  _ maunon _ . 

While Lyz and Micah would never profess deep love for one another, it was always there, somewhere buried very,  _ very  _ deeply. It was shown in the way they checked on one another after an unusually rough fight, in the jeering jibes and rolled eyes. Their relationship was highly dysfunctional and their mother didn’t understand it, but for Lyz, it was all she really had. The other children her age were scared of her, and for good reason, so the only people she talked to on a regular basis were her mother, Micah, and the scruffy-looking grey feline her brother had brought her from one of his excursions in the forest, a scrappy little hellion that she’d named Maverick. 

His temperament was almost as intense as hers, always getting into houses of her neighbors and chasing livestock and birds. It was a game to the cat, who loved to be chased by others, but always evaded capture slyly, before sauntering back to Lyz’s room where he would lounge as though nothing in the world could touch him unless he expressly let them, which had earned him the nickname  _ strikheda _ from Micah. 

Other than fighting, one of Lyz’s favorite pastimes was to scale the vertical, jagged rock-face up to a perch that had once been home to a nest for a large bird, and look out at the world around her. She could see the gleaming, blue-green lakes of the  _ Leikru _ , the dense  _ Gloukru  _ forest, the  _ Sankru _ to the West, and, in the very far distance, she could see the  _ Flikahoum _ , the giant tower in the center of Polis. She wondered privately to herself what it was like there, if she would come to love Polis as much as she loved her home in the cliff face. 

Her mother always told her to stay within the borders, to never wanted into  _ Leikru  _ territory, but, as with most things, Lyz never listened to her. 

While her mother was busy around the village healing people, Lyz would quickly shimmy her way down the mountain to a lower level, the descent only taking about an hour at best, face smeared with grey paint to make her blend in. She finds a nook in the rocks to perch, and spends hours observing the bustling life of the  _ Leikru _ people, eyes tracing the boats that line the lake, as well as the loud, friendly commerce as goods were traded, much different from the relatively stony nature of her own people. They seemed so  _ open _ . 

She returns to the nook on a weekly basis, intent on studying her neighboring clan until she can fully understand them, and notices a trio of children who appear to be around her age lurking around the bottom of the mountain, keen eyes looking for  _ Roukru _ people. They never saw her, of course they didn’t. The inexperienced eyes of  _ Leikru _ would never be able to find a carefully camouflaged  _ Roukru  _ warrior, not unless they wanted them too. And Lyz wanted them to see her, wanted to see how they’d react. 

So she would follow them, creeping along the edge of the mountain as they peered up curiously, until, finally, the boy spotted her. 

His reaction left much to be desired, as Lyz soon found herself being pelted by stones, and the flame of irritation was ignited within her, and she leapt off of her perch and directly onto the annoying boy, tackling him to the ground in a flurry of fists and hurried blows. She could hear the taller girl laughing raucously in the background, and then felt smaller hands pushing at her chest. 

Without thinking about it, Lyz slammed her head forward, but the yelp that escaped the body she’d just slammed into was decidedly more feminine than the boy she’d been fighting, and she pulled away quickly, noting with minor horror that she had just attacked the boy’s sister, who had been making an attempt to break up the fight, ever the peacemaker. But what  _ really  _ interested Lyz about the diminutive brunette was the black blood that was leaking from her nose, which was bleeding profusely as a product of Lyz’s headbutt. 

The girl’s brother and sister hurry her back to their home, and Lyz similarly scrambles back up the mountain and to her own village, but her heart is heavy, because she knows that now she will be forced to leave, as others have seen her blood. 

Her mother yells and calls her a  _ branwada _ when she tells her, before scooping her into a bone-crushing hug and sobbing, because she has already lost her  _ houmon,  _ she doesn’t want to lose her  _ yongon _ , too. Micah’s response is less emotional, but Lyz can still see the sadness deep within his dark blue eyes, and he ruffles her hair and informs her, quite bluntly:

“You’re taking the hellbeast with you, because I won’t be taking care of him.”

It’s his way of ensuring, in his own strange logic, to ensure that she won’t forget about him. It was Micah, after all, who rescued Maverick as a kitten for her, who helped her raise the small beast, and his memory would follow the scraggly feline around wherever he went. 

The village elders seem almost relieved to see her go, and while most would find this offensive, Lyz finds amusement in their exhausted expressions. She knows that she has caused enough trouble to last them a lifetime, and that they will tell the next generation of  _ Roukru  _ children about the girl with blonde hair and blue fire in her eyes who never backed down from a fight, and she found peace in her departure. 

After she was collected from the balding man, Titus, whose facial expression always made it seem as though he had swallowed a sour berry, they made their way down the mountain and to the lake. She was given a horse to ride, and placed Maverick on the gentle giant’s head promptly upon her mounting, and, surprisingly, he stayed, content to nap while the horse lumbered forward. 

They collected the brunette from the days before, and Lyz couldn’t help but feel sympathetically sorrowful as she was sent away by her brother and sister, who had tear stains streaking down their faces, obviously distraught by the removal of their little sister. 

Titus, isn’t a great conversationalist, so the brunette, who is called Lysh, and Lyz bond on their journey to Polis. 

“Sorry for almost breaking your nose,” Lyz says sheepishly, shrugging her shoulders and rubbing the back of her neck, unaccustomed to apologizing. Her fights were usually purposeful, and she had never been regretful for hurting someone before, because they’d usually garnered her rage for one reason or another. 

“It’s fine,” Lysh assured, “Buck was asking for a beating anyways, I’m not sure what got into him.” 

“So no hard feelings?” Lyz asks hopefully, trotting alongside Lysh, as Titus had allowed them off of the horses to stretch their legs for a little while, while Maverick still rests on her horse’s head, unphased by the removal of the rider. 

“None,” Lysh says with a soft smile, and Lyz brightly, moving to skip, but yelping as she trips over her own feet and tumbles forward, much to Lysh’s amusement. 

“ _ Nomonjoka!” _ the explicative escapes Lyz’s mouth without so much as a thought as she tumbles forward, and the girl besides her seems almost taken aback at the foul language that has so easily become a part of the blonde’s vernacular, as her brother had imprinted the words upon her, and they’d stuck. 

Titus shoots her a glare worthy of a  _ maunon _ , and she slams her mouth shut promptly, and re-mounts her horse. He doesn’t let them walk after that. 

The two of them quickly become best friends, Lysh’s patience and peaceful nature balancing out Lyz’s hotheadedness and overall brash personality, providing a quelling voice that Lyz has so desperately needed throughout her life. While the brunette has no qualms making friends with the other nightbloods upon their arrival, Lyz is more hesitant. She holds resentment towards the other blonde in the group, Aden, who had arrived first, and is very clearly  _ heda’s _ favorite. Lyz, who is accustomed to coming second for anything, regards him with hostility, as he is her biggest competition, in her eyes, but her stomach wins out over her pride when he silently offers her stolen honeycakes, and she begins to think that maybe he’s alright. 

Civil War is looming on the horizon, and the nightbloods see their counterparts from opposing clans slowly join them in Polis, won over by Lexa’s promises of a united coalition, of a concentrated force focused on defeating the  _ maunon _ , an idea that fills Lyz with stubborn determination. They had taken her father, she would make them pay for that with their lives. 

While she and Nam are a rather explosive duo on the sparring pits, matching each other in skill and general love for fighting, Daya, from the Delphi Clan, is perhaps even more reckless than Lyz is. The frizzy-haired, dark skinned girl is always looking for an adventure, and takes great pleasure in journeying into the depths of the forests in search of  _ pauna _ , gleefully telling anyone who would listen about her journeys riding wild beasts during her time in her homeland, and Lyz thinks she’s absolutely  _ fantastic _ , especially when Lysh irritably slaps her on the head with a roll of parchment whenever she and Daya return from a day’s adventure, muttering about how the two of them are stupid and reckless and they’re going to give her a heart attack one of these days. 

Titus quickly becomes Lyz’s greatest enemy. 

The balding man has no sense of humor, and she constantly mutters under his breath that he needs to remove the tree trunk lodged up his ass. Lexa heard this comment once and choked on her food, as they’d been eating dinner, a small smile crossing her face, much to Lyz’s horror, but from that small expression the blonde knows that  _ heda _ agrees. In addition, his punishments are barbaric, and leave the nightbloods sore for days, and Lexa always gives them time to recover. Lyz often forgets that Lexa had once been a nightblood herself, and had also been forced to undergo Titus’s iron-fist rule.

He also  _ abhors  _ swearing, so, more often than not, Lyz found herself being chased through the hallways of the  _ Flikahoum _ by Titus —who was surprisingly agile for a man his age who never wore anything other than sweeping robes that were very easy to get caught up in—wielding a bar of soap and a scowl. 

Costia’s death places a solemn mood on all of the tower, and not even Titus chastises the nightbloods on their mourning, because she had played a large part in their lives in Polis, tenderly caring for them after a rough round of training or a too-harsh punishment from the flamekeeper himself. Lyz almost envies those who come after, Wiley, Koda, and then eventually, Sammy, because they didn’t understand the veil of grief, the pang of a missing family member. They had never known Costia, so they had no reason to mourn her. 

Sammy is perhaps the oddest of the nightbloods, and Lyz is intrigued by the quiet boy, who doesn’t speak until four months into his stay at Polis. He preferred to stick to the shadows, dark skin, shaved head, and onyx eyes allowing him to melt into their depths undetected. One of Lyz’s greatest achievements in life, though, is being the one to get him to talk for the first time.

It had been a sparring day, in which they had little tournaments in the pits, taking turns fighting one another until their was a victor, usually Nam, herself, Daya, or Aden, and Lyz had taken a rather spectacular stumble.

“AH!  _ Nomonjoka—”  _ The words escaped easily, and Sammy quirked an eyebrow in amusement when he saw Lyz hopping up and down on one foot, a string of curses flowing from her mouth freely, clutching to the toe she’d just stubbed, the rest of the nightbloods present laughing at her misfortune. 

“Lyz,” Lexa sighed, shaking her head ever so slightly, “you know you aren't supposed to use that language. Titus would have your tongue for that, and Sammy will pick up on it.” 

“Oh, no, don't stop her on my behalf. Watching Titus chase after her with a bar of soap is funny.” It took the others a moment to realize that Sammy had actually, spoken, and that it wasn’t their imagination. Even  _ Lexa  _ looked slightly taken aback, and Sammy scowled at their gobsmacked expressions. “What? I'm six, not deaf.” 

From that moment on, Lyz made it her priority in life to try to get the silent boy to talk, to laugh, react,  _ anything _ , and he warmed up to her slowly, smiling at most of her jokes, and laughing softly sometimes when she fell, which was often. 

When  _ maunon _ come raining down from the sky, Lyz is immediately wary of them. 

They look too much like the enemy, behave too much like the enemy for her to trust them. The mountain men had killed her father, after all, and his death still weighed heavily on her heart, and they had the potential to be even  _ worse _ , because they didn’t have to cower away from the air. She feels her heart grow hard with anger when she hears of the burning alive of three hundred of Lexa’s warriors, Anya among them, and clenches her fists tightly, assuming that her previous suspicions were correct. 

But then, Lexa does the unthinkable. 

She establishes an alliance with them. 

Logically, Lyz knew that the Coalition stood the best chance of defeating the mountain with the aid of the  _ skayon _ , but she doesn’t let go of grudges easily. She accepts the alliance, however, because Lexa’s word is law, and she wants more than anything a chance to enter the mountain, to fight, to rip apart the monsters that had killed her father, to finally get her revenge. 

This is why, when she hears the retreat horn sounding, she is filled with a sense of disappointment. She feels cheated of her chance to finally avenge her father, and keeps her distance from Lexa for a month following, stewing in her discontent and anger. Lysh tries to get her to forgive the commander, and Lyz applauds her best friend for her efforts, as the smaller brunette didn’t like anyone in their makeshift little family fighting, but Lyz is the most stubborn of the nightbloods, and doesn’t budge easily. After the first month, though, she loses the hostility and slowly warms back up to Lexa, because the older girl is the closest thing she has to a mother now, and she doesn’t want to lose another parent. 

Lyz has nothing but admiration for Clarke,  _ wanheda _ , the feller of the mountain. 

She had been able to do what Lyz had dreamed of for years. She had finally,  _ finally  _ ended the threat of the mountain. Clarke had avenged her father’s death. So when Clarke arrives in Polis, against her will, but arriving all the same, Lyz immediately takes an interest in her, accompanying Nam’s lessons with the older blonde on how to properly defend herself. The  _ skaiheda’s _ frosty, skittish demeanor reminds her of Maverick, which causes Lysh to burst into a fit of giggles when she makes the comparison, because it’s true. The scraggly cat won’t let Lexa within ten feet of him, and Clarke behaves much the same early into her stay in Polis. 

But something changes, and Lyz slowly watches as Clarke opens up to Lexa once more, allowing the girl in. The only thing that would have garnered such a response after such a crushing betrayal was love. It had to be love. Her suspicions were confirmed in the aftermath of Lexa’s death. Lyz doesn’t think she’s seen anyone that devastated since her own mother after her father had been taken by the  _ maunon _ . Maverick seems to sense Clarke’s distress, and offers her a dead mouse, which for some reason only makes the older blonde shake with sobs, confusing the cat to no end. Lyz knows that she can trust Clarke to care for the small demon should she perish in the Conclave. 

Ontari is ruthless and cruel. 

Lyz is filled with a blind rage when she sees the older girl’s sword pass clean through her best friend, Lysh, who had always been soft to match her edges, who had been the reason to Lyz’s insane ramblings. If Lysh were there, she would have told Lyz to take a moment to clear her head before rushing headfirst into a fight, but Lysh was not here, not anymore, and Lyz would not allow herself to clear her head. 

Her anger made her movements reckless, but she was able to get a few good hits in before the inevitable came, in a quick, rushing blow, making her breath stutter and her eyes shut violently. 

When she next opened them, her hands were free of blood, and everything felt warm and right. Lysh was waiting for her, and she ran and swept the other girl into a firm hug before repeating the same motion with Lexa. Pep was being held in the arms of an older boy that she knew must be his brother, Lennox, from his countless stories, and her keen blew eyes scanned the treeline before finally latching on to the person she wanted to see most, and with a grin, she launched herself forward, feeling strong arms that she hadn’t been in for so long capture her and lift her into the air. 

She grinned up at her father when he placed her down, and tugged at his arm, desperate for him to meet the others, and in her rush, she failed to notice the root of a tree, and tripped, tumbling forward into the small stream currently inhabited by a laughing Mari, and the familiar curse leaves her mouth before she can stop herself, and her father is laughing, as is Lexa, and for once, she doesn’t mind their teasing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maverick is the true star of the story. Next up is Daya, another little hellion! Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> As always, comments/kudos are greatly appreciated, come hang out on tumblr, [hedaclexa](http://www.hedaclexa.tumblr.com).


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